Rothstein's Bet
by LacrimosaDeMagpyr
Summary: When a naive young man loses a bet with the notorious Arnold Rothstein, his wife agrees to spend the night with him in lieu of payment. It's a darkly erotic story, not for kids, and with original characters. It's also my first ever fanfic, so please be gentle! If you'd like me to carry it on from this point, just leave some nice feedback and I'll figure out what happens next...
1. Chapter 1

1

A shabby little drawing room with drawn curtains and the New York night pressing in outside. A sense of tired, faded, fraying at the edges, subtly desperate gentility.

Out there in the darkness, there's the Roaring Twenties. Prohibition is a bad joke, and everyone knows it. Out there, there are speakeasies and clandestine deliveries of bootleg whisky and danger and secrecy and covert action. Clicking glasses and popping corks and shameless flirtation and giddy extravagance teetering on the edge of hysteria, and the brandy and the champagne and the sloe gin fizzes are flowing like water.

In here, there's just the two of them. Him and her and an overwhelming sense of disbelief.

She sits and lets his garbled rush of apologies and excuses flow over her. His voice seems to be coming from a long way away, all of a sudden.

She can't believe what he's just told her.

_A joke,_ she thinks distantly, _it must be a joke._ But she knows at the same time there's no way that's even possible. It would be the cruellest joke in the history of the world, if it was. And the man standing awkwardly across the shabby little drawing room doesn't have a cruel bone in his body. She doesn't need six years of marriage to tell her that. She knew it the day she first met him eight years ago, at the Hobarts' Connecticut summer house. When she first saw him strolling along that impeccably-tended gravel path with a whistle on his lips and a battered old tennis racket swung over his shoulder and not a care in the western world.

In a way, that essential lack of malice shows on his face. He looks like a kid in a way that's hard to place. He's tow-headed, with a stubborn little cowlick that always springs up on top of his head. An open, pleasant, freckled face, an easy boyish smile (although that's nowhere in evidence tonight). And more than any of that, his childlike quality comes from the expression of his face in repose, the way he stands and walks and laughs and just plain _is._

He scores zero out of ten when it comes to cruelty and pettiness and vindictiveness and spite.

But a treacherous little voice deep down in her mind –a voice that sounds too much like Aunt Marie for comfort - whispers that he scores a damned-close-to-perfect ninety eight point five per cent when it comes to dumb.

'Come on, Lizzie,' he bursts our desperately, 'say something, say anything. Tell me I'm an asshole, hit me in the face, just – '

She looks at him for a long slow second. He looks maddeningly innocent, maddeningly lost. A sheepish little kid standing, crestfallen and apologetic, by a billion shards of broken cookie jar. Part of her wants to do exactly what he's just invited her to, to hit him and keep on hitting him till she can't move her arm any more. And another, bigger part of her wants to take him in her arms and say _it's all right, I won't let anyone hurt you_, because even though he's six months her senior, there's always been a maternal edge to her love, something fierce and tender and protective. Something that loves him not in spite of his weaknesses, but actually because of them.

There's a long silence before the sound of her own flat, pragmatic voice takes her by surprise.

'He was kidding you. He must have been.'

And that's something she can believe, cruel or not, because the third party in this situation is an entirely different creature from her lawful wedded husband Rick Buchanan, he belongs to another world from the two of them in every conceivable way. And though she's only seen that man once, maybe four months ago, and fleetingly at that, she can well believe that_ he'd_ make a joke like this. She thinks_ he's_ capable of just about anything.

A moment's hope - but then the look on Rick's face tells her that she's clutching at straws.

'He wasn't joking. Lizzie. I'd bet my life on it.'

An unfortunate turn of phrase and she can see him realising it a second too late. And she doesn't want to be shrewish, but she's earned her right to be shrewish, this nightmare evening, and she speaks sharply.

'Don't you think you've bet enough already?'

He bites his lip. He hangs his head to look at the floor and the slightly fraying carpet.

'You don't have to do this,' he says. 'I know it's not right for me to ask you. I wouldn't blame you if you left me. Just walked out and left me to it. You know your aunt would take you in.'

He's trying to be all noble and gentlemanly. But she can see, written all over his face, that he doesn't really want her to say_ thanks, so long then, _pack her bags and hand this unthinkable situation right back to him like a fizzing stick of dynamite. He's scared. He's pale beneath his tan, and there's an entirely uncharacteristic tension in the way he's standing and the way he doesn't seem to quite know what to do with his hands.

The sound of her own flat voice takes her by surprise all over again.

'One night.'

He nods quickly, eagerly almost. As if he's trying to convey an undercurrent of _it's not that bad really, Lizzie, it's not as bad as it sounds, it's only one night, it's only one night with another man. A man whose name's a byword for _dangerous_ across this whole damned city, and a long way beyond it too. _

'That's what he said.'

There's a long, tense, charged pause.

What she wants to say is, _don't you ever think? Didn't you think for a second, when you got invited to that notorious gambling club by some spoilt-brat playboy of an old school friend you hadn't seen in years, it might be bad news for a guy without the proverbial pot to piss in? Didn't you think you should maybe hang back a little when all the money-no-object rich boys started throwing their inherited megabucks around at the tables? And when the biggest and most notorious gangster in this city invited you to join his card game, didn't you think you were out of your depth – but no, not at all, you were so flattered, flattered and drunk and reckless, delighted to be playing in that league, to be one of the big boys. And when you started winning you just couldn't stop, and even when the tide turned you still couldn't stop, and by the time the night was over you owed the notorious Arnold Rothstein fifty thousand dollars that might as well be fifty million, and the only way he won't call your debts in and destroy you is if he can spend a night with your wife. With me. You stupid, stupid bastard._

What she actually says is,

'Okay. I'll do it.'

'I knew you wouldn't let me down.' His face lights up as he steps towards her. 'I'm so sorry, Lizzie. If there was any other way, I'd never ask you, but –'

He reaches her and moves to kiss her on the lips. She turns her face aside, and he kisses her cheek instead.

In her mind, the words are echoing_, it's just one night._

_2_

She sits at her dressing table, getting ready. Brushing out her long dark chestnut hair. In the mirror, her brown eyes look like a stranger's. As she looks at her reflection, Aunt Marie's remembered voice fills her mind.

_Do you know, you've actually improved with age, girl – I never thought you'd be much to look at when you were younger, but you've turned into quite the beauty. You could make a far better match for yourself now, and I could help you. You made a mistake when you shackled yourself to that ridiculous young fool, and you know perfectly well how furious I was with you at the time, but now - _

But what that imperious old grande dame of New York society doesn't understand is, Elizabeth loves him. Why, who knows? All she knows is that she has done since she was sixteen - her shy wallflowerish self at a distant cousin's lavish estate for a weekend-long house party, hovering awkwardly on the outskirts of the giggling and shrieking and flirtation and extravagant entertainments, carrying the van Doren name as she had done all her life. Something eye-catching and embarrassing she had to wear every day, painfully aware that it didn't fit her right or suit her at all. A sort of fraud, and although the name was hers by right as much as it was Aunt Marie's, that seemed a technicality. Because awkward girls with dead bankrupt fathers and haggard anxious mothers who slaved over sewing machines to make their daughter's summer wardrobe and visibly went white every time the bills came didn't have any business bearing a name as exalted as Elizabeth van Doren.

Like her mother, she got invited to all the best parties and tennis weekends and country club balls, but didn't have anything to wear there that didn't instantly mark her out as an outsider.

Unlike her mother, she went, because her mother wouldn't have it any other way.

A good match could transform their fortunes out of all recognition. And good matches happened at social events like these.

But what actually happened was Rick Buchanan. All effortless natural confidence and nonchalance, quite indifferent to the fact that his financial situation was even worse than hers. He could talk to anyone, make anyone laugh, charm anyone, go anywhere.

When he looked at her, he seemed to see something quite different to the plain, mousy, insignificant charity-case relation everyone else saw. And when she looked at him, she saw the man she knew she'd spend the rest of her life with.

When they talked, she forgot all about how shy she was and how she never knew what to say to boys. Conversation with him came just as effortlessly as breathing.

They were in love within the week. Engaged within the year.

The poor relation of one big society family. Dumb enough to marry the even poorer relation of another.

Two romantic young fools. Ideally matched. No wonder, she thought with a flicker of black humour, it had been love at first sight.

And her love for him hadn't changed, even through all the hard times and overdue bills and worries that had followed their wedding day, because his carelessness and wild disorganisation and appalling judgement lost him jobs just as quickly as his charm and confidence and boyish good looks got them for him.

Her love for him hadn't changed. Even though she had.

She knew it was conceited, and possibly even delusional. But at some level deep down inside, she could see the truth of what Aunt Marie had said to her. At sixteen, she'd been as invisible as a little brown sparrow. At some point in the eight years between then and now, she'd unexpectedly blossomed. Men's eyes followed her on the street as they never had done before. The attention should have flattered her, but actually made her feel a bit uncomfortable. She wasn't used to it at all, she wasn't anyone's idea of a flirt. She loved Rick, and wasn't remotely interested in anyone else. She'd never felt the slightest flicker of interest in another man since they'd married.

Except, that one night -

By some sneaky circuitous route, her train of thought's brought her back to the exact subject she's been trying to hide away from.

She finds herself remembering the night when she saw_ him. _

Arnold Rothstein.

The man she's – unthinkably, shockingly, inescapably – supposed to be spending tonight with.

It had been in one of the city's most lavish speakeasies. A far more flashy, fast sort of place than she usually went to. She and Rick had been invited there by Rick's louche cousin Bobby, who moved in altogether more glitzy (and occasionally sleazy) circles than Mr and Mrs Rick Buchanan were used to.

Sitting at the table with Bobby and his showgirl girlfriend Gloria, Elizabeth had looked around the crowded, lavishly decorated, rosily-lit room, feeling both fascinated and miles out of her depth. Dispiritingly aware of how dowdy and old-fashioned she must look with her tied-back hair, in her plain blue cotton dress. All the other women in evidence were as colourful as birds of paradise, bedecked in dazzling jewellery and scandalously low-cut evening gowns that glittered with sequins. All the men in evidence were suave and authoritative in crisp black and white evening dress.

'See that guy at that table over there?' Gloria had whispered to her. 'He's the biggest gangster in this city, which means in America, which means like _anywhere_. They say he's worth more than a hundred million dollars and there's not a speakeasy in town he doesn't own. Name's Arnold Rothstein. You must have heard of him, right?'

Elizabeth had. Vaguely. To her, it was a name that implied nonspecific menace and notoriety, but nothing more than that. Her eyes went over to the table Gloria had discreetly indicated.

'Which one is he?' she asked curiously.

'Dark hair, grey waistcoat. Next to the bald guy with the big cigar.'

Elizabeth focused in on him. The notorious Mr Rothstein was younger than she'd have imagined, perhaps thirty or thirty-five. His dark hair was sleeked back from a pale, aquiline face. He was dressed to kill in an immaculate high-collared white shirt, a black bow tie, a flawlessly-tailed black jacket and a charcoal-grey waistcoat. He was clearly at the centre of the noisy table, controlling it in a way that was hard to define, even though he wasn't talking. He had an air of unflappable, poised and watchful elegance – detached, self-contained and distant. As if he was both there and somewhere else at the same time.

She knew it was silly, but as her eyes lingered on him, a momentary chill went through her body.

She suddenly thought that if that man was the lion of the urban jungle, she was happy to be an insignificant gazelle. It was better that way. Safer.

'Excuse me for one moment,' she said to Gloria, 'I have to go and powder my nose.'

The washrooms were out of the way of the main bar and restaurant area. They were located down a long, wide, quiet corridor that was as ostentatiously elegant as everything else here. There were ornate gold wall-mounted lamps, a thick red carpet, and red and gold patterned silk wallpaper. All that red gave a strange quality to the light, Elizabeth though, as if it was shining in through glass the colour of blood.

She emerged from the ladies' room, and began heading back to the table.

And saw him coming down the corridor in the opposite direction.

The man Gloria had pointed out at the table. Arnold Rothstein.

Their eyes met as they walked towards each other. She felt suddenly flustered and jumpy as she realised he was looking right at her, and making no attempt to disguise his scrutiny. The expression on his pale, handsome, aquiline face was cool, searching and appraising. It unnerved her and made her feel like blushing. She wanted to pull her own eyes away from him, but for an endless second, it was as if she somehow couldn't. His eyes were so dark, it was as if they were all pupil in this eerie red light. Hooded, unreadable. They seemed to hypnotise her.

She was shocked - astonished - to feel a slow cold tingling feeling spreading over her whole body, Seeming to begin from that secret place between her legs, and creeping outwards from there.

The feeling was horrible. Frightening but weirdly thrilling at the same time. It was something she'd never felt before. She'd never felt anything like it.

Closer and closer they came to each other down the silent red corridor. Up close, he was bigger than she'd thought. Tall and broad shouldered, but slim with it. He carried himself with a grace and an elegance that was intimidating in a subtle way. There was no swagger or overt menace there. Just the quiet assurance of some sleek and lethal big cat.

Above all, there was an indescribable presence to this man. A watchful, enigmatic stillness that seemed to run fathoms deep.

As they drew level, he gave her a slow, lazy half-smile.

'Good evening,' he said in a low well-spoken voice that was as calm and smooth and assured as the rest of him.

Her heart was suddenly pounding inside her. So loudly, she thought he must be able to hear it on the silence that surrounded them.

'Good evening,' she said uncertainly.

Then he was walking on, and so was she. Quickening her pace, obscurely shaken and breathless. As if something very important - even shocking - had just taken place.

Little by little, her heartbeat began to slow down. When she got back to the table, she never mentioned the encounter to Rick or anyone else. Why should she? There was nothing to mention. Arnold Rothstein had just smiled at her and said _good evening._ No matter how strangely the man had affected her, nothing untoward had taken place...

There's a flicker of movement in the mirror in front of her. It pulls her back to the present tense, hard. She turns her head. Rick's standing in the doorway.

'I'm sorry, Lizzie,' he says quietly.

'I know,' she says – then, with an effort, 'it's okay. I'll be okay.'

'It's just one night, after all,' he says.

There's a long, tense silence.

'The car'll be here soon,' he says.

'I know,' she says. 'I'm almost ready.'


	2. Chapter 2

3

The black Rolls-Royce at the kerb is a bizarre apparition on this down-at-heel street. It gleams like oil under the streetlamps. A uniformed chauffeur holds the back door open for her, his face impassive and blank. She gets in, a bit clumsily. The chauffeur climbs back into the driving seat. She finds herself wishing he'd smile or say something, but he doesn't. His manner is respectful but totally wordless, radiating formality. The dead silence in the car is oppressive and tense, and her steadily increasing apprehension takes root in it and grows.

She sits back, realising she's as jumpy as hell. Not far away from real panic. She can feel her nerves thrumming and humming away inside her like live wires. Any loud unexpected noise, and she'd jump out of her skin. She takes a long deep breath that's supposed to be calming but isn't. She breathes in the dark rich smell of expensive leather upholstery. The engine starts, and the Rolls Royce glides off almost silently. She looks out of the window as the dark New York streets unwind beyond her.

An ice-cold, furtive, unthinkable excitement creeps through her, sneaking under her skin like a thief in the night. She tries to pretend it isn't there, but the tense demanding pulsing ache between her legs can't - quite - be denied.

She finds herself remembering that moment when they saw each other in that hallway. The unsettling, almost frightening electric feeling that ran through her body when their eyes met.

The car comes to a halt. The chauffeur turns the engine off. She looks out. They're in the city's most exclusive neighbourhood, just off Park Avenue. Tall immaculately-maintained trees rustle in a gust of wind, and lavish townhouses are locked up against the night. The chauffeur gets out, and comes round to open the door for her. She climbs out. He doesn't speak a word. Nor does she.

And the ache between her legs intensifies little more. As if excitement and fear are feeding off one another, and growing all the time.

The chauffeur escorts her to the door of a truly extraordinary townhouse. Even in this neighbourhood, it's something special - she thinks it looks more like an ultra-exclusive five star hotel than a private residence. They walk up the wide stone steps that gleam a luminous white in the darkness, up to the huge black-lacquered front door. The chauffeur rings the bell. She can hear faint chimes from inside. No more than three seconds later, the front door's opening, and a uniformed butler stands there. Beside her, the chauffeur fades back silently into the night, job done.

'Hello,' she says uncertainly. 'I'm here to see Mr Rothstein.'

She feels suddenly uneasy, wondering how much this man knows about the night's proposed events. His smooth pink face tells her nothing whatsoever.

'Very good, madam. May I take your coat?'

She nods, takes it off and hands it to him. She doesn't see what he does with it. She's looking down at the gleaming parquet floor that shines like the coat of a thoroughbred racehorse. If she's ever been this nervous before in all her life, she can't remember when it was. She feels squirmingly uncomfortable and unsure, all question marks and vulnerability.

'If you would care to follow me, madam...'

She follows the butler down a long hallway, lined with closed doors at widely spaced intervals. Even though this is only the hallway, it's spectacular beyond belief; impossibly high moulded ceilings, vast crystal chandeliers, extraordinary original artworks in huge gilt frames. Both ultra-tasteful and awesomely lavish.

The butler stops at one of the closed doors, and taps at it discreetly. The calm voice from inside speaks at once.

'Enter.'

The butler opens the door. She steps across the threshold into the room beyond it.

'Mrs Buchanan to see you, sir.'

The door clicks shut quietly behind her. She barely notices. She's standing in a huge study that looks like a room in an ultra-exclusive gentleman's club, all gleaming mahogany panelling and ceiling-high bookshelves and studded oxblood-leather chairs. There's a faint smell of polished leather and expensive cigars. Lavish as the room is, it couldn't be more elegant and understated. As elegant and understated as the man who owns it.

And there he is, sitting behind the huge dark wood desk. Her eyes settle on him, and immediately want to jump away skittishly. The sight of him sets her heart pounding all over again. There's a green-shaded lamp switched on atop the desk, and no other lights in the room. Inky pools of shadow flood the corners of the study. The low light should be intimate and flattering. Instead, she thinks there's something menacing about it, something subtly and insidiously sinister.

She steps towards him slowly, as if in a dream. Dimly, she realises that she's forgotten the full impact of his physical presence. How intimidating and darkly compelling he actually is, in the flesh. Tonight, he's as pale and remote and elegant as some medieval prince – as immaculately dressed as before, cool and crisp and unreachable. It's like the way she felt before, approaching him down that hallway, but a million times more so. As if that was a wave and this is a tsunami.

'Elizabeth.'

His voice is quiet, calm, cool, precise. Absolutely and effortlessly in control of the situation.

She doesn't know what to say. She shifts uncomfortably on her feet. She sees him watching her, as still, alert and poised as a cat watching a mouse with its tail slightly moving.

She's half expecting him to invite her to sit down across the desk from him. But he doesn't. She knows he can sense her mounting discomfort – the tension on the air is almost palpable - and she feels suddenly sure that he's playing with it, intensifying it for his own amusement.

And at the thought, something deep inside her tightens another notch.

'So you came,' he says unexpectedly. 'I very much hoped you would.'

'I didn't have much of a choice.' She speaks without thinking, the words jumping out into the room. 'Not if I wanted to help my husband.'

A smile touches the edges of his mouth.

'Very true,' he says meditatively. 'Well, well, well.'

There's a long silence. Then his voice breaks it unexpectedly, every bit as cool and silky and courteous as before.

'Take your dress off, Elizabeth.'

Cold shock stabs her in the heart. Of course, she knew, must have known, that something like this would happen – but part of her has been anticipating some kind of gradual build-up to the event, a little small talk to put her at her ease, perhaps a couple of drinks to take the edge off her nerves. The suddenness and immediacy of his command turns her blood to ice.

She stares at him like a rabbit in headlights for endless seconds. Not knowing quite what to do or say.

'You heard me, Elizabeth. Unless of course, you'd prefer to renege on our little... arrangement?'

She shakes her head dumbly. She's got to go through with this, for Rick's sake. And at the same time, that terrible, unthinkable excitement intensifies a little more, like a volume dial turning up inside her. She has to do whatever this man says, and he knows it, and he knows that she knows it.

'I'm waiting, Elizabeth.'

The cool silky authority in his voice makes her shiver with fear and shameful, unthinkable desire. Her gaze falls to the floor as her hands go to the neck of her cotton dress and start undoing the buttons that run up the front. It falls away from her. Underneath, she's wearing bra and knickers and stockings and suspenders and nothing else.

Her eyes raise up again, looking at him in mute appeal. That faint smile touches his mouth again – whether it's amusement or lust, she can't tell. He nods slightly.

Her hands go to the back of her bra. She unhooks it, and it falls to the floor, leaving her breasts bare. Then she tugs at the elastic waistband of her knickers, pulling them down and stepping out of them. She can't bear to look at him as she does all this, but she's constantly aware of his eyes on her blushing, flinching, shameful nakedness. She's about to start unhooking her stockings when his voice comes from across the desk again, taking her by surprise.

'No. Leave them.'

Her hands fall to her sides and hang there, not knowing what else to do. She desperately wants to cover her breasts and sex, but knows she can't. Weirdly, she feels more naked than naked in the stockings and suspenders, appallingly exposed and vulnerable. It feels so strange, so wrong, to be standing like this in such a flawlessly elegant room. There's a juxtaposition of formality and obscenity in the atmosphere that's jarring and disturbing beyond belief.

And unthinkably, she can feel her sick dark creeping excitement intensifying all over again.

The physical distance between them – and the unhurried, silent detachment with which he watches her – is extraordinarily intimidating. She can feel that cold dark unreadable gaze boring into her. As if she's his toy, entirely at his disposal and awaiting his pleasure, His expression makes no secret of the fact that he's deciding at his unhurried leisure what he wants to do to her first.

'Open your legs,' he says casually. 'Play with your cunt.'

The final word - not one she's at all used to hearing - shocks her disproportionately. It's all the more shocking because it's spoken in such a calm, cool, courteous voice. She hesitates once more. When he speaks again, there's an edge of icy menace in his tone that chills her blood.

'When I give you an order, you obey it, Elizabeth. Do you understand?'

'Yes, sir,' she says, and the _sir _seems to come out unbidden. She doesn't know why. It just feels right.

Her hand goes to her sex, tentatively moving across her pubic mound and venturing lower, to the secret place between her open legs. She touches herself as she's occasionally touched herself before, in the privacy of her bed at home – but the sensation's far more intense than it's ever been at those times, the sensation's in an entirely different_ league_ right now. She's so wet, it's as if she's been rubbed down there with hot slick oil. She's appalled and ashamed by her mounting sexual response, her ever-increasing desire for physical release, but she just can't help it.

She's overwhelmingly aware of the fact that she's doing this for his entertainment, that he's lounging back in his seat across that huge desk, watching her through those unreadable eyes as if she's some mildly entertaining floorshow. That she's having to put on this obscene show for his fleeting whim, aware that all that matters in this room right now is that he's amused, entertained, satisfied.

And the knowledge somehow feeds her own sick pitch-black sexual thrill even more, and she can helplessly feel herself getting more and more turned on every second. Her finger brushes lightly across her clitoris, and she can't stop herself from crying out loud, and the sound conveys all the hunger in the world, and all the longing.

'Stop,' he says abruptly. 'Take your hand away.'

She does, instantly obedient now, overwhelmingly aware of the shamefulness of this situation. Of the fact that she's standing here all but nude in front of this ice-cold all-powerful stranger's desk, ready to do whatever he wants whenever he wants it.

'I didn't tell you to enjoy it so much – did I? This is for my pleasure, not yours.'

Tension gathers in around them. He speaks again in that dark, musing voice.

'I think you're getting a little too excited, Elizabeth. I think I'll need to examine you myself. Bend over the desk.'

She does, propping herself up on her elbows. He rises to his feet.

'Open your legs,' he commands her. 'Wider.'

She does, and sees him coming over to her. When he gets close, she catches the tang of his aftershave, something cool and citrus and subtle and expensive. And then suddenly, his elegantly manicured, long-fingered hand is climbing up her inner thigh – it feels as cool as a marble statue against her flesh, which is almost feverishly hot and ultra-sensitive. And as it finds the slick and swollen folds of her sex, she can't stop herself from crying out again, louder this time.

Part of her wants nothing more than for him to just unbutton his trousers and drive himself into her, to possess her right here and now, hard and deep and brutal.

But he doesn't. Instead, he just caresses her down there, a feather-light caress that's expert and taunting and maddening and unbearable. Impossible to submit to without arching her back and pressing up against his probing fingers and crying out in sheer raw animal need.

'I can see I was right.' His voice is as cool and detached as she isn't. 'My, my, Elizabeth. What a little slut you are.'

The fingers of his spare hand twine in the roots of her hair. Turning her head slightly so she's looking up into his lean, handsome, smiling face.

'What sort of woman gets so excited by playing with themselves in front of a total stranger? You say you're doing this for your husband's sake, but I can't imagine he knows that you want it so badly, that you'd be quite so shamelessly enthusiastic. Imagine what he'd think, Elizabeth. Have you ever got this wet for him? I don't think so, do you?'

She's almost in tears as his silky, gloating voice flows over her. Because she knows he's right. She's desperately ashamed and shocked and shaken and appalled by her own unprecedented physical reactions, even as the cool knowing hand between her legs continues to provoke them with a virtuosity beyond belief. She squeezes her eyes tight shut to try and block it all out of her mind, to pretend this isn't really happening.

'No.' It's a sudden hard, imperious command like the lash of a whip. 'Keep your eyes open. Look at me.'

So she does, staring helplessly into his eyes. His glittering, cold, excited eyes. She thinks that he's getting a massive sexual charge from her reactions, the wildly conflicting expressions crossing her face, desire and terror and powerlessness and guilt and shame. His voice has become quiet and calm and silky-smooth again, and it flows on and on in her ear as he brings her closer and closer to a climax, his words alternately caressing and lashing her.

'Are you enjoying this, or do you want me to stop? Or maybe both at the same time? You're getting more and more turned on, you know, I can feel it... my, my, look how wet you're getting, you're an even bigger whore than I thought you would be. Shall I make you come, Elizabeth, would you like that...'

And she feels like she's a fraction of a centimetre away from coming, all frantic raw nerves and helplessness, not even knowing exactly what she's feeling any more, or why. There's nothing inside her but a screaming mass of conflicting emotions and a rapidly intensifying physical need. An overpowering longing for the total, blissful oblivion he can give her so easily. And she can feel her hips moving in time to his expert touch, pressing up against his talented fingers and everything inside her's building and building, like the very beginning of a tidal wave –

And then without warning, he stops.

And she's sure she's going to tip over into a mind-blowing orgasm at any second even without him touching her, she's that close – it's as if she can feel herself seesawing on the edge of climax for an endless second, like a car seesawing on the far edge of a cliff – but then the seesawing stops, and she comes to a halt, and she hasn't gone anywhere. Distantly, she's amazed by his control in being able to do that to her. But the amazement's overcome by yearning and disbelief, and overwhelming screaming frustration. She can feel tears springing to her eyes, because she's never wanted to come so badly in all her life, and she realises that he's not going to let her.

'No,' he says idly, 'I don't think so.'

His hand tightens in her hair again, turning her head so she's looking into his face once more. He has a half-smiling, intent look. His eyes have a cold gleam to them that sends an icy, apprehensive feeling shuddering through her body.

'I think you need to be punished for enjoying this so much, Elizabeth. Don't you agree?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Good. That's very good.'

He brushes a stray lock of hair away from her face. There's an infinite and deceptive gentleness in his butterfly-light touch.

'Because I think I'll rather enjoy hurting you.'

His hands stray to her naked breasts, expertly caressing them.

'And you know, Elizabeth – there's literally nothing you can do to stop any of this. No matter how much it hurts.'

Two of his fingers press at the sides of her right nipple, squeezing it lightly. Suddenly and without warning, they tighten like a vice, crushing the little peak cruelly. A sharp cry of pain escapes from her mouth.

'Is there?' he asks lightly, and twists hard.

'No, sir.'

She gasps the word aloud in a pain-filled voice, and his fingers loosen. Her mind's a chaotic whirl of emotions. Momentary relief and underlying fear and an excitement so cold and strange and intense that it's almost nauseating. This whole situation is like nothing she's previously known, or even imagined. It's so far removed from all she's ever experienced of sex – those amiable, mildly pleasurable nocturnal encounters in the marital bed – it seems to belong to a different world.

'So defenceless. So afraid. And yet... so excited, too.'

That cool, dark, musing voice washes over her. As if he's merely thinking aloud.

'Poor little Elizabeth. Completely mine, to do as I want with.'

He lets her go unexpectedly, and walks back round the desk without hurry or urgency. Her eyes follow him apprehensively. She sees him opening one of the desk drawers and taking something out. Her eyes widen as she sees it's a thick tan leather strap.

His footsteps, slow and purposeful, ring out on the wooden parquet floor, coming up behind her. He twists her long, glossy dark chestnut hair into a rope, pulling her head back hard. She cries out sharply, and the sound contains a whole dark universe of fear and pain and desire.

'Six strokes, I think,' he says casually. 'Does that sound sufficient to you, Elizabeth?'

His voice is solicitous, mocking. It doesn't matter what she thinks. He knows it. She knows it.

'Yes, sir.'

He loosens his grip on her hair and lets it go. She lies her head down on the shiny wooden surface of the desk, whimpering slightly in fear. She can feel him drinking in the sight of her, bent over at the waist, buttocks raised and waiting for him to strike. Naked and exposed and totally defenceless.

There's a long, long pause, a sense of gathering tension. Then the strap cuts into her hard and sudden and unexpected, and she shrieks out loud. She's expecting another straight away, but it doesn't come. Instead, his hand strokes idly across the dark welt he's just left. She can't see his face, but his voice sounds like he's smiling slightly.

'Make as much noise as you like, Elizabeth. Nobody's going to interrupt us. I can do whatever I like here.'

He carries on. He whips her with a slow and diabolical accuracy, some of the weals touching and overlapping each other. He pauses between each blow for an unbearably long time. Exactly long enough for the pain of each one to reach its absolute zenith. By the time the last stroke falls, she's sobbing helplessly, hot tears running down her cheeks.

'There, there, Elizabeth. I know it hurts.'

Again, his hand strokes lightly over the marks he's left, raised and tender. That burning, urgent need between her legs intensifies.

'Have we had enough now, I wonder?'

Nothing leaves her mouth but an animal-like whimpering noise. Pain or no pain, tears or no tears, a weak dreamy dissolving feeling washes over her at his gentle touch. She's almost faint with the force of her own longing for him to touch her again, fuck her, bring her to the climax she so desperately needed. She's trembling helplessly with desire. She can smell the musky, feverish scent of her own arousal.

She hears the strap drop to the floor. He's right behind her, so she can't see him at all.

As if she's somehow picked up an extra sense, she can feel him unbuttoning his trousers and taking his cock out.

He drives himself into her hard and deep and peremptory, with no warning at all. God, he's big. Hard as an iron bar. The sensation's unreal, obliterating, and she cries out in forbidden ecstasy.

She pushes herself back against him shamelessly, as if he can't possibly penetrate her deep enough or hard enough, suddenly not caring about anything but the mind-blowing pleasure he can provide. Again and again he pounds into her, again and again and again. And her orgasm's like a bomb going off inside her – on another level from anything she's ever known or even distantly imagined before, on a whole different planet of intensity and sensation and sheer raw animal urgency - and the world shatters into a million tiny fragments and there's nothing in the universe but him and her and here and now and _this._


	3. Chapter 3

4

She sits in the back of the Rolls-Royce as it travels through the night. It's a lot quieter out there, now. The streets they drive through are virtually empty. Any activity's going on well out of sight. She barely notices. A million and one images jostle for position in her mind, each more disturbing and darkly erotic than the last. She's preoccupied and distracted beyond belief. She doesn't even notice the car's stopped moving until the chauffeur's voice – the first time she's heard it, low and respectful – speaks unexpectedly.

'Madam. We're here.'

She jumps slightly, sitting bolt upright. Seeing that the chauffeur's twisted in his seat to speak to her. She looks outside. They're parked right by the main entrance of her nondescript apartment block. The slightly run-down neighbourhood looks alien and forbidding in the thin frail yellowish streetlights. It's got to be well past midnight now.

She blinks at him stupidly for a second. Everything inside her is moving and reacting a bit too slowly. As if she's just woken from the world's most vivid and extraordinary dream. As if she's floated out of the cinema after the most mind-blowingly enthralling movie she's ever seen, her mind a dreamy haze. Part of her wishing she could see it all over again.

'Thanks very much,' she says quickly.

She gets out. The car idles there, waiting for her to get in safely, as she gets her keys out and lets herself into the apartment block. She crosses the cigarette-smelling foyer and walks up the creaking wooden stairs to the second floor. She unlocks the door and lets herself into their apartment.

Rick's there. He's sitting in an armchair and smoking. One quick look at him, and she can see how tense and distracted he's been. What a Godawful evening he's been having, waiting for her to come back. His face is uncharacteristically pale and drawn. He jumps up from his seat and comes over and embraces her almost fiercely, as if part of him thought he wouldn't ever see her again.

'Oh, Lizzie,' he says hoarsely.

In his arms, she feels suddenly strange. Stiff and tense and unyielding. She tries to melt into his embrace, but can't – quite – do it convincingly.

'Are you okay?' he asks her.

'I'm okay.' She hurries to reassures him, fighting to sound normal. 'Don't worry.'

'Was it – I mean, was everything – '

'It was fine.'

He falls silent. He doesn't want to know the details, she realises. Of course he doesn't._ Who the hell wanted to think of their wife, the woman they loved, doing God knows what with another man to save their hide?_ She knows perfectly well that Rick's desire to bury his head in the sand concerning the gory details is only natural. But part of her suddenly can't help despising him a little for it, all the same, and she's shocked beyond belief to feel that way. She pulls out of his arms and turns away, so he can't see that flicker of momentary contempt on her face.

'Come on,' she says. 'Let's go to bed, shall we?'

In the bedroom, she starts stripping off with that same dazed feeling. She's startled by his sharp intake of breath behind her.

'Jesus, Lizzie. What happened?'

She's standing with her naked back to him. Realising what he's just seen, one of her hands instinctively flies to the red raised welts that Rothstein's leather strap left across her buttocks and upper thighs. Her own light touch brings a slow hot tingling feeling, an aching soreness that – unthinkably, appallingly – makes that sick dark longing rise inside her all over again.

'It's nothing,' she says quickly. 'I'm not really hurt. They'll fade away soon.'

'That goddamn animal.'

She feels horribly guilty at the fury and helpless protectiveness and sympathy in his voice. He thinks she's been through something terrible, she thinks. Some unthinkable ordeal she can't wait to forget. And suddenly the tender swollen wetness between her legs is like evidence of a crime she's committed, a crime Rick mustn't ever know anything about.

'It doesn't matter,' she says.

'It's over now,' he says fiercely. 'You'll never have anything like that happen to you again, Lizzie. I promise.'

'I know,' she says, and she's oh so glad she's facing away from him, because – for a second - she can't possibly hide the overwhelming regret and loss she's feeling. As if she's just experienced the greatest mind-blowing high ever, and nothing else in the world will ever come close – for the rest of her life, every touch and kiss and penetration will seem pallid, insipid, inadequate.

When they're in bed and the light's been turned off, his reaching hand touches her back tentatively. She moves away from him like a crab.

'No. Please. Not now.'

'It's okay, Lizzie. I understand.'

A tense silence fills the dark bedroom. For endless seconds, she can hear him breathing. Then his voice speaks again, taking her by surprise.

'I didn't want – _that,_ Lizzie. Just to hold you.'

She edges away a little further. She's right on the edge of the low, sagging marital bed, now. Any further and she'd tumble out onto the floor.

'I know,' she says. 'Just – not tonight. I'm sorry.'

'I understand,' he says again. 'It's fine.'

'Let's just go to sleep, okay?'

He does, little by little – Rick can sleep absolutely anywhere, whatever's going on – but she can't quite get off to sleep herself. She lies there beside him, wide awake and jumpy, her heart beating a little too fast inside her. Staring up at the dark mottled ceiling. Forbidden images creep out in the darkness and dance through her mind, taunting and irrepressible - seeming to set her whole body alight, burning within her like a low-level fever.

She finds herself helplessly remembering Arnold Rothstein in more detail. The nuances of his face and his private little half-smile and those midnight-dark, fascinating eyes. Those long pale surprisingly beautiful hands, like a surgeon's or a pianist's, flawlessly manicured. Hands that know exactly how to give her the maximum pain. And the maximum pleasure.

Something indefinable about him - that signature brand of controlled and unpredictable cruelty, the chilly suave malevolence of the man - affects her in a way she can't understand, but can't deny.

Her hand creeps between her thighs, burrowing up her plain cotton nightgown. Her thighs are burning hot. When she finds the hot liquid longing at the point where they meet, it's all she can do to stop herself from crying out loud.

She writhes like a snake, a long slow shudder running through her body. A kaleidoscope of disjointed pictures flood her imagination, a frenzied jump-cut from one to the other and back again. The leather strap coming down on the back of her thighs. The hand in her hair twisting her head round. The cold hypnotised feeling of stripping naked in front of him. The way he looked behind the huge dark wood desk. The extraordinary, obliterating sensation of him driving into her body from behind.

And when she comes, it's with her head thrown back and mouth stretched open in a silent scream. Desperate not to wake the man beside her. Unable to stop herself from losing herself in total unthinkable glorious release.

She lies back at last, breathing hard, shaken and disbelieving. Hating herself for the way she feels. Completely unable to change it.

_Stop it,_ she tells herself furiously_. It's all over now, and that's for the best. You'll never see that man again as long as you live. You need to get on with your normal life, your real life, your safe life. You need to forget that tonight ever happened._

But when she finally falls asleep that night, she dreams about him.


	4. Chapter 4

5

She approaches the Waldorf Hotel down the crowded, sunny early-afternoon street, in this ritzy part of New York's shopping district.

A whole week's passed since that fateful night with Arnold Rothstein.

Still, deep down at the back of her mind, part of her's still thinking about him.

She thinks it's as if her encounter with that man was a terrifyingly, instantly addictive drug. She's tasted it once, and now she's hooked, and there's no way she'll ever be able to get another fix as long as she lives. Because it simply isn't available to her any more.

It's like an itch under her skin that gnaws at her surreptitiously, day and night. A restless preoccupied sick hunger for something that's totally out of her reach. All week long, at unexpected moments, she's found her thoughts sliding back to him helplessly. Wondering just what he's doing right _now, now, now. _

She tells herself that raw, ravenous desire for him is fading slightly. Whether that's the truth or just wishful thinking, she doesn't know.

Anyway, it'll leave her in time. She'll forget all about it, sooner or later. Common sense tells her she's bound to.

She walks through the lavish marble foyer of the intimidatingly huge, glitzy hotel, and approaches the restaurant at the back. She can hear noises from inside it as she gets closer. A silvery peal of female laughter. A low steady rumble of conversation. A pianist playing Night and Day with tinkling, arrogant ease.

From experience, she knows exactly what's going to happen when she reaches the restaurant's reception desk. So she's not at all surprised when the impeccably uniformed waiter standing behind it gives her a long slow dubious look that couldn't look much less welcoming if it tried. She sees him seeing the plain woollen navy blue dress that's seen better days. The conscientiously maintained but slightly down at heel, too-often-mended black shoes. The big battered black handbag that's very definitely about practicality rather than style.

'Can I help you, madam?'

Every single time she meets Aunt Marie in places like the Waldorf, _this _happens. Elizabeth's come to find a philosophical, weary dark humour in it all, smiling inside at the predictable way the waiter's expression changes when she says:

'Yes, thank you. I'm meeting Mrs Marie Vanderbilt for lunch. She's booked a table for two at one-thirty.'

'Oh – certainly, madam.'

He's suddenly a jarring mix of oleaginous charm and thinly-veiled confusion. He obviously can't read the situation at all. She thinks sardonically that one of these days, someone should take this man aside and explain to him the meaning of the phrase _poor relation._

'Let me escort you to your table,' he says.

She follows the waiter through the elegant, noisy lunchtime restaurant, over to a window table bathed in golden sunlight. Her aunt's sitting there already, waiting for her.

Marie Vanderbilt, nee van Doren, is a tiny bird-boned woman of sixty – no more than five foot tall, but radiating six foot eight of glacial authority. She has the manner of a woman who expects to get exactly what she wants exactly when she wants it, and God help the staff if it doesn't arrive on a silver platter. She's dressed all in black, as usual (_the most slimming colour,_ she always says knowingly, although she's the last woman on earth who needs to care about _that_), and huge lustrous pearls round her neck and wrists. Her hair is a carefully-dyed ash blond bob, styled in such a way that she could stand in a hurricane and not get a single hair out of place.

She rises from her seat and embraces Elizabeth as she reaches the table. Elizabeth hugs her back affectionately, breathing in her heavy and slightly overpowering floral perfume.

'Dear girl, let me look at you.' Aunt Marie looks her up and down critically, as if compiling a formal inventory. 'Beautiful face. Lovely figure. Utterly appalling dress. I'd rather hoped you could treat yourself to something new at last – I was under the impression that ghastly husband of yours had improved his fortunes recently.'

'I don't think so.' They both sit down. She looks at Aunt Marie curiously. 'What gave you that idea?'

'I have it on reliable authority that he's been throwing his money about at an _extremely _exclusive gambling club - Cecelia's husband Charles saw him there not two weeks ago, playing for very high stakes indeed. If he hasn't come into some money, I'm at a loss to see how he could afford it.'

Elizabeth feels suddenly uneasy. She realises that was the night when Rick got into that fateful card game with Rothstein. She struggles to keep her expression blank. Her shoulders rise and fell in a way she hopes looks convincing.

'He didn't tell me about that.'

Aunt Marie frowns deeply. She has a sharp alert little face like a Chihuahua. It could have been built for expressing disapproval.

'I do hope he's not getting himself into debt, Elizabeth. Not for his sake. For yours.'

'I'm sure he's not,' Elizabeth says quickly. 'Honestly, he'd have told me. He tells me everything.'

The waiter comes over to their table. They order their food and a glass of wine each.

'Well – you must let me take you shopping for something new when we finish our lunch,' Aunt Marie says. 'It's an utter crime for a lovely girl like you to be wearing such a dowdy dress. Do you know, a new Christian Dior has opened round the corner - I'll buy you something that actually suits you.'

Elizabeth shifts in her seat awkwardly.

'Aunt Marie, really, you mustn't – '

'Oh, nonsense,' Aunt Marie cuts in brusquely. 'You know perfectly well I'm only too happy to treat you. I simply draw the line at spending a single penny that's going to benefit that half-wit who calls himself your husband. If you care to have my assistance towards a nice property - or perhaps a holiday on the continent - my conditions are perfectly simple. Leave that man, and then we can discuss the matter further.'

Elizabeth sighs inside. Everything regarding Rick and Aunt Marie is a diplomatic minefield. Rick has absolutely no idea how much the wealthy old widow hates him – most people like him instantly, and he takes it puppyishly for granted that this is the natural order of things. He therefore assumes that her brusque manner towards him conceals a certain gruff affection, which it most certainly does not. Aunt Marie regards him less as Elizabeth's husband than as an opportunistic sneak thief who stole the chance of a good marriage from her niece and replaced it with a shabby rented flat and a permanent overdraft.

Elizabeth's never had the heart to tell Rick any of this, and prefers to let him live in happy ignorance. Albeit in vague permanent confusion as to why Aunt Marie will never lend them a single dollar.

'That's not going to happen, Aunt Marie,' she says carefully.

'Well, one can but live in hopes,' Aunt Marie says crisply. 'Ah, here comes the waiter with our drinks.'

Over lunch, Aunt Marie regales her with a steady flow of scandal and gossip – she's extremely good company in her sharp, acerbic way, and the time passes quickly. When lunch is over, they walk out of the hotel together, and Aunt Marie points out the ultra-elegant-looking boutique across the street.

'There it is. Christian Dior. Home of the finest dresses in New York City.'

Elizabeth hesitates. 'Well... if you're sure...'

'Entirely certain. Come along, let's see what they have for us.'

Elizabeth wouldn't dare go into the terrifying-looking designer store on her own, but beside Aunt Marie, it doesn't seem quite so frightening. They walk in together. The assistant – a thin, chic-looking woman of about forty - gives them a big bright brittle smile. Elizabeth can't help thinking that smile is primarily aimed at Aunt Marie, and even more specifically, at Aunt Marie's pearls.

'May I help you at all, madame?' she asks Aunt Marie, in a heavy French accent.

'Perhaps you can. We're looking for something that would suit my lovely niece here. A pretty day dress that's _in the fashion_ - as I believe the young people say.'

'Ah, we 'ave a new delivery in today that would suit you to perfection, mademoiselle.' The saleslady reaches out to one of the racks, and withdraws a dress with a theatrical flourish. 'Tres belle, non?'

Elizabeth thinks it's beautiful. A dark tobacco-brown coloured dress in intricate lace, with a matching brown slip underneath it. She doesn't want to act too enthusiastic, in case it's so insanely expensive that even Aunt Marie thinks twice when she sees the price tag. But Aunt Marie looks it up and down and nods decisively.

'We'll try that, why not and also a few others – you go and try that on, Elizabeth, and I'll see what else they have here. I'm sure I know your size and your best colours.'

The saleslady's smile widens even further. Any wider, Elizabeth thinks, and the top of her head's going to fall off.

'Very well, mademoiselle - allow me to escort you to the dressing rooms...'

Elizabeth feels unexpectedly and ridiculously happy as they walk through the store. Her dark feverish obsession with Arnold Rothstein seems to have fallen silent – maybe temporarily, but at least it's something. It's really exciting, being fussed over in this awesomely beautiful dress store. A totally different world from the scrimped-for second-hand bargains she's used to.

The assistant leads her through the curtains into the most impressively-appointed changing rooms she's ever seen – two huge cubicles, and a communal space beyond it lined with massive gilt-framed mirrors. There's another woman there, standing in one of the cubicles with the curtain wide open. It looks like she's got half the store in there with her. She's a tall, slender, impossibly glamorous woman of around twenty-nine, with flawlessly styled blonde hair that gleams like polished gold. She raises a manicured hand to flick it back irritably. An off-the-charts enormous diamond engagement ring that would put Aunt Marie's pearls to shame glitters in the dressing room's bright light. A mousy little assistant fusses round her, adjusting ribbons and doing up side zips. As Elizabeth walks past, she catches a little of what the blonde woman's saying to her, in a cold flat high-society drawl.

' simply isn't up to the standard of Paris - I should know. I've spent the last three weeks there. The tailoring that I'm seeing in this store can't possibly compete.'

A moment's pause, then she speaks again, with curt irritability.

'Oh, for heaven's sake - not like _that. _Haven't you been trained at all?'

Elizabeth feels a bit sorry for the assistant. The woman radiates bitchy, spoilt ex-debutante Park Avenue Princess to an extraordinary degree – Elizabeth knows the type from her less-than-sadly-missed schooldays. As the French assistant ushers her into the spare cubicle, the blonde's voice rises again, petulant and demanding.

'Could you please button me up a little faster? I'm sure I don't have all day to waste in here.'

Elizabeth smiles wryly to herself, glancing down at the ground and trying not to get the giggles.

'Would you like me to help you try the dress, mademoiselle?' asks the French assistant.

'Oh, I can do it myself, thanks very much,' Elizabeth says quickly.

'Very good, mademoiselle. If you need anything more, I will be outside.'

The French assistant leaves. Elizabeth slips out of her dowdy navy-blue dress and tries on the tobacco-coloured lace. Oh, it's so extraordinarily beautiful. Words can't do it justice. Behind her delight and gratitude for her aunt's generosity, she hears the blonde woman's cold, flat, drawling cut-glass voice from the other cubicle.

'I can't decide. Put them all aside, yes, all ten – and the mink stole I tried on earlier - my maid will collect them later and bring them to the house so I can try them in privacy and peace. I can see what I actually look like in my dressing room, too. The light in here's appalling.'

Jesus, she must be _a massive _customer here. Maybe she's a film star or something, and Elizabeth just didn't recognise her. Sheer nosiness makes Elizabeth come out of her cubicle, pretending to be looking at herself in the enormous communal mirrors. Actually she's just trying to catch another glimpse of the icy blonde who comes sweeping out of her cubicle, now dressed in extraordinarily intricate and impractical-looking ivory lace.

'And the handbags I mentioned, as well. In red, black and jade green.'

'Yes, Mrs Rothstein.'

And the words freeze Elizabeth in her tracks like a statue. As if something's just waved a magic wand at her and turned her to stone.

The curtains swish closed behind the woman's departing back.

Aunt Marie comes through, holding a few more dresses over her arm. She stares at Elizabeth strangely.

'Whatever's the matter? You look as if you've seen a ghost.'

'It's nothing. It's just –' Her voice sounds distant, as if it's coming from a long way off. 'Did you see that lady who just left?'

Aunt Marie nods, looking impatient and slightly curious.

'Carolyn Rothstein. What of it?'

'You know her?'

'She's not an intimate friend - but one can't be anywhere near the society that matters and not know who she is. Why do you ask?'

Elizabeth hesitates for a long, long second. Then, all of a sudden, she can't stop herself from asking.

'Do you know who she's married to?'

Insanely, inexplicably, she finds self praying to God that Aunt Marie's about to say _Carl Rothstein_ or _James Rothstein_ or some other name – it can't be that weird a surname, and this is a damned big city. Why it matters to her, she just doesn't know, but she desperately doesn't want to hear the words -

'Arnold Rothstein - who else?' Aunt Marie snorts. 'The Big Bankroll, I believe they call him - though heaven knows, I dare say he'll rather need it with a wife like that. Now, have a look at this dress I found out there, I think scarlet would suit you quite marvellously well...'

For the rest of her time in the store, Elizabeth feels as if she's sleepwalking awake. As if she's just received the most terrible news in the world, and has to pretend that everything's fine. Suddenly, she couldn't care less what dress she leaves with, or even if she leaves with any dress at all.

She can't make sense of her reaction. So Arnold Rothstein's married. So what? So's she.

There's no reason at all why she should feel devastated, betrayed, rejected, hurt beyond words,

But she does.

She remembers the blonde woman saying _it simply isn't up to the standard of Paris - I should know. I've spent the last three weeks there._

Maybe from his point of view, that extraordinary night was just a fleeting spur-of-the-moment entertainment while the woman he _really _wanted was out of town. Something that meant nothing to him, something that wouldn't leave any lingering mark in his memory. No matter how huge and earth-shattering and important it had seemed – and still seemed – to her.

His image rises behind her eyes. She blinks it back like tears.

Aunt Marie buys her the tobacco brown lace dress, and she desperately tries to act happy.

Back home, she unpacks the dress from its meticulously folded tissue paper and hangs it up in her rickety wooden wardrobe. It looks shockingly out of place among the much-mended crap that's already in there. She catches sight of her reflection in the mirror across the room. People say she's blossomed in her twenties, and sometimes, in her more optimistic moods, she even believes it herself - but not now, not here. Suddenly, to her own eyes, she looks exactly like she always looked when she was a teenager. A gawky, invisible little brown mouse.

She thinks back to Carolyn Rothstein's extraordinary golden glamour. A glamour that surrounded her like a forcefield.

And Elizabeth feels like she hasn't felt in a very, very long time. Ever since she met Rick, in fact. That razor-sharp unbearable pain of rejection and unworthiness. Once again, she's the shy girl with the home-made ballgown sitting alone on the edge of the country club's dancefloor. Hopelessly aware that the boy she really wants doesn't even know she's alive.

Ridiculous, to think that she would have meant anything to a man like Arnold Rothstein.

He could have _anyone._

_Oh stop it, stop it, stop it,_ she tells herself furiously. _Pull yourself together, for God's sake. Rick's your husband, and you love him – even if you seem to have forgotten about that lately. Arnold Rothstein isn't meant for you. And never was. And never will be._

She tries to pour all her nonsensical, insane but undeniable heartache into cooking dinner. She slaves for hours over a slow-cooked lamb stew that she knows Rick likes. She finds all the chopping and peeling and boiling and simmering is weirdly therapeutic. Rick's been working at an insurance agency for the last nine months, making it one of his longer-running tenures. When the front door opens at seven o'clock and she hears his footsteps in the hallway, she feels a bit more like herself again, and calls out with a cheerfulness that's only about half-feigned.

'Hi, honey. How was your day?'

But there's no answer. She frowns slightly, listening out. His footsteps are approaching the kitchen and he hasn't spoken a word. And she suddenly thinks those footsteps are slower than usual, almost dragging.

_Something's wrong,_ she thinks sharply, and then he walks into the kitchen, and she knows it for a fact. One look at his tense white face tells her it's something bad. Something _really _bad.

'What is it?' she demands, suddenly scared. 'What's happened?'

'It's _him._ Arnold goddamned fucking _Rothstein._'

The silence in the room goes on and on and on. In all of that time, she doesn't seem to breathe at all. She can see his lips pressed in a tight white line. As if he's trying to hold some unthinkable words back.

And then at last, he speaks. The words come bursting out of him abruptly.

He says, 'He wants to see you again.'


	5. Chapter 5

6

For endless seconds, she just stares at him. Everything seems to have stopped dead inside her. Distantly, she's very aware of tiny sounds around them. The clock ticking on the wall by the stove. Muffled footsteps and voices from the apartment above. An irritable, blaring car horn from the world beyond the window.

The savoury, homely smell of lamb stew hangs heavily on the air. It seems incongruous, somehow.

He stands there, and doesn't meet her eyes.

For a moment, she thinks he's going to burst into tears. She's never seen him cry, not even when he first told her what sort of trouble he'd got himself into. Knowing him as well as she does, she thinks it's not from the guilt of having let her down, of asking infinitely too much of her. Not even from the real terror she's going to say _screw you,_ depart for Aunt Marie's and leave him to face the music. No, more than anything, she thinks the tears are threatening to come because of the shee_r injustice _of it. He's like a kid in so many ways – it's what's most lovable about him, and also what's most infuriating - and he has a kid's innate, bone-deep sense of fair play. Of what's right and what's wrong.

When he speaks again, his tense words prove her right.

'It's just so goddamned unfair. I paid the debt, like we agreed – hell, _you_ did – but the son of a bitch just changed the rules. And there's not a single damned thing I can do about it. It's not like we put anything in writing.'

Silence falls heavily. He takes a long deep breath. When he speaks again, he sounds like he's giving evidence on a witness stand. Simple declarative sentences.

'I got a telegram saying he wanted to see me. I went to his office. I didn't know what he wanted. He invited me to sit down. Then he said –'

He stops talking and just stands there, head down, pale and tense. It occurs to her fleetingly that her husband's learning some hard cold lessons, ones that most people learn considerably earlier in life – that actions have consequences, that you can't trust anyone who you don't know very well indeed. And perhaps most pertinently, that a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

As to whether those lessons will stay with him, she's pretty sure that they will. She's never seen him like this before. He's like a different person, and the face he finally raises to her is filled with a self loathing that's as alien to Rick Buchanan as the surface of the moon.

'I'm being a piece of shit to even_ ask_ you, after what happened last time. Holy Jesus, those _marks_... you're best off away from all this, Lizzie. Tell me it's over and you want a divorce. Go stay with your aunt. I'll take you there myself.'

More of that tense, tense silence.

'This is on me. It's my problem. I'll handle it.'

She looks back at him. At some level, it's like she's looking at him from a very long way away. She's horribly and overwhelmingly aware of the gulf - hell, the_ chasm_, the _Grand Canyon_ - between what he thinks she's feeling right now, and what she's actually feeling.

He thinks she's feeling fury. Shock. Betrayal.

She's actually feeling as if all the glorious colours have sprung back into a dull grey world, and her heart's picking up speed like a train leaving the station and heading out into wide open country.

She speaks more carefully than she's ever spoken in her life. Weighing every single slow, deliberate word before she lets it out into the room.

'I'm not going anywhere. I'll do it.'

'Lizzie. You don't have to.'

There's another long pause. Something flickers in his eyes.

'This could happen again, you know. God knows how many more times. I said to him, _how do I know it ends here? _And he said, _you don't, that's for me to decide_. That motherfucker - oh jeez, excuse my language, Lizzie. I'm just so damned mad. _That's for me to decide._ Fucking asshole.'

And even though it's just reported speech, maybe not even verbatim, it's as if she can hear an echo of the dark smooth voice she's been hearing in her dreams for a week. Plaguing and haunting her like an obsession.

Out of nowhere, there's a hard steady treacherous pulse between her legs.

She closes her eyes for a second. Behind her closed eyelids, she sees Arnold Rothstein's face.

'It doesn't matter. _I'll do it.'_

Her voice is all finality, all ferocity, all _that's-the-end-of-the-matter._ As she sees the slow dawning look of disbelief and gratitude and awed wonder on his face, guilt kicks deep down inside her.

But it's almost drowned out by the cold rush of longing. Intense beyond belief,

'Oh, Lizzie,' he says hoarsely. 'Jesus, I don't deserve you.'

He steps towards her and kisses her, almost ferociously, as if he's releasing all his suppressed tension and guilt and anger and helplessness in a hard rush of sudden passion. She kisses him right back, even harder and fiercer. Digging her short unpainted fingernails into his broad shoulders in a way that isn't like her at all. Suddenly, raw sexual energy's racing through her body like an electric current, seeming to light her up from inside. She can feel his momentary surprise at the intensity of her reaction before he just goes with it. His hand moves inside her dress, inside her bra, finding her breast and squeezing it hard.

And some distant little part of her that's still rational thinks that - with the sort of low-level telepathy that's maybe a feature of any happy marriage – she can tell what he's thinking, somehow. He thinks that she's being driven by the same impulse he is – a fleeting, fierce hunger to escape from this terrible reality in a moment of mindless physical pleasure. And he's thinking, on top of that, the unexpected ferocity of her passion is her way of showing him she loves him more than anything, even with all this happening, even now.

'You're the most wonderful woman in the world,' he pants beside her ear.

She squeezes her eyes tight shut so she could be anywhere, and the smell of slow-cooked lamb stew vanishes around her and is replaced by the smell of books and cigars and leather.

And as he pushes her up against the wooden dining table so her butt's resting on top of it and wrestles the waistband of her panties down, she thinks about a voice like double cream and dark brown velvet, and midnight-dark, unknowable eyes.

She thinks about a subtle half-smile that promises and threatens everything in the world.

She thinks about Arnold.


	6. Chapter 6

7

She sits in the back of the black Rolls Royce in her tobacco-brown lace dress from Christian Dior with its matching tobacco-brown satin slip underneath. She's spent more time getting ready tonight than she did last time. Maybe more time than she's ever spent getting ready in her life. Her hair's piled up in an elaborate French pleat that took her close to an hour to perfect, working from a how-to step-by-step guide in a ladies' magazine. The powder and paint on her face feel weird and unfamiliar. She's very aware of her carefully applied red lipstick, and of the necessity not to smudge it.

Rick wasn't there to notice. He had to work late tonight. Well, that's what he'd told her apologetically that morning when he left for the office, not quite meeting her eyes. She's pretty sure he's actually sitting at some bar right now, with a group of friends perhaps. Having a third or fourth martini, and trying to pretend that what's happening tonight isn't really happening at all. Rationally, she knows it's only human nature that he'd try and take himself out of the picture this evening – no red-blooded man on the planet wants to see his wife getting ready to spend the night with someone else. Even so, the memory of his conspicuous absence inspires a new feeling of distance inside her. An entirely unfamiliar alienation. Even – shockingly – a sort of resentment.

But his absence was for the best, perhaps. He'd certainly have felt a little suspicious if he'd seen the amount of time, anxiety and preparation that went into her toilette. The way she was ready an hour too soon, only to return to her dressing table twice more. Fiddling with a stray thread of hair, reapplying face-powder with a shaking hand when she caught the hint of a shine on her nose. Heartbeat ticking inside her with the feverish speed of an overwound watch.

Her hands fiddle with each other nervously, twining in her lap.

They've been driving a long time. In all that time, the chauffeur hasn't spoken a word to her, or her to him. Outside the windows, the bright lights of urban New York have given way to open countryside and silent, velvety summer darkness. She can see the occasional glow of distant lit-up windows set well back from the road. Sprawling country houses behind high protective walls. She doesn't need to see a map to know that this is where New York's seriously wealthy have their weekend retreats.

The car stops right outside seven foot tall wrought-iron electric gates. The chauffer winds down the window, leans out and presses a combination on the grid of buttons set into one gatepost. Then the gates are swinging open in front of them, and they're driving through.

The avenue-wide tree-lined driveway seems to go on for miles. Her nerves seem to be intensifying all the time. She thinks the car's smoothness and silence is unsettling. Eerie. As though they're gliding over the surface of the world in a bubble.

Then they turn a corner and the most extraordinary house she's ever seen is there in front of them.

Fleetingly, she remembers the Hobarts' summer retreat in Connecticut, where she first met Rick.

_This_ makes that look like a gardeners' cottage.

She immediately thinks of Versailles, although she's never been there. Some breathtaking French Renaissance palace.

The house is all blinding white stone, illuminated by surrounding floodlights that maximise its drama and beauty. The downstairs windows are lit up with dazzling golden light. Vast white stone vases flank the wide, shallow steps leading up to the front door with perfect symmetry.

The surrounding gardens seem to stretch out as far as the eye can see. They look like smooth dark suede in the moonlight. She has the immediate impression of quite extraordinary upkeep. There's not a single, microscopic weed out of place here. Not a single flower that's less than perfect.

Distantly, she's aware that this change of scene is because Carolyn Rothstein is now back at the Park Avenue townhouse.

But suddenly, the knowledge seems weirdly meaningless and irrelevant. Here and now is all that matters. She's existing solely in the present tense.

Ironic, really. She's been dreaming of a second meeting with Arnold Rothstein with every single molecule of her being. And now she's right on the brink of that second meeting, she feels like a petrified rabbit in headlights.

Her heart's pounding away inside her. Her mouth is as dry as a bone.

She's very aware that she doesn't know what to expect tonight. She doesn't know what to expect at all.

The chauffeur turns off the engine. He gets out and comes round to open the passenger door for her. She steps out with a murmur of thanks, inhaling the heavy, sweet, evocative smell of recently- cut grass and roses. She can hear the steady background rustle and chirrup of crickets.

She looks up. The black night sky seems far bigger here than in the city. There's a thin pale rind of crescent moon. A million tiny stars twinkle down at her.

She's not wearing a coat tonight. Her shoulders and arms are bare through a thin, delicate latticework of lace. Even though it's a reasonably warm evening, her hands go to her forearms which are pricking with sudden gooseflesh, hugging herself. She's shivering slightly as she ascends the steps to the massive front door behind the chauffeur. Whether it's from cold or nerves, she can't tell.

She stands beside him as he presses the doorbell, and hears the faint sound of it chiming inside the house. Just like last time, she thinks. In her mind, the scene seems to have taken on an oppressive ritual quality. An almost dreamlike sense of déjà vu.

The door opens, sending luminous golden light spilling out onto the moonlit stone steps. Another crisply uniformed butler stands facing her. Of course, she realises, Arnold Rothstein will have a full standing staff at both houses.

'Good evening, madam,' he says in a grave, polite English accent, and the chauffeur steps back into the night as she walks inside and the front door closes behind her.

The hallway's immense. She sees white marble pillars, a vast curving staircase sweeping away into the darkness upstairs, spectacular floral arrangements that look as tall as she is. The biggest chandelier she's ever seen or even imagined in her life is lit up dazzlingly, and it's the only light in evidence, and the light's low and golden and flattering.

She follows the butler down that hallway, towards a half-open door. They walk through it. The butler stops. So does she.

They're standing in a lavish, formal dining room. The round table in the centre of the room could seat ten people or more. There's another chandelier overhead, but this one's just a faint glitter in the shadows. A silver candlebra on the table provides the only light in the room, and the flickering candlelight is like molten gold, heavy, intimate. There are two places set out, side by side, laid with an extravagant intricacy of silverware and glinting crystal and bone china. There's a white tablecloth that seems to glow luminously.

And_ he's _sitting there. Waiting.

He rises to his feet as she comes in.

'Elizabeth,' he says coolly, courteously, formally.

She looks at him for a long, slow second. Part of her has been hoping that she won't feel the same, this time round. That her obsession will have burned itself out, that familiarity will have bred some degree of contempt – or at least indifference. That the extraordinary effect he has on her will have somehow diminished.

But it hasn't diminished.

It's intensified.

He's dressed in his habitual flawless, severe tailoring – black jacket and trousers, white starched shirt, black bow tie, a satin waistcoat the colour of dark port wine. The sight of him in the candlelight holds her momentarily hypnotised with helpless, wordless longing, intense enough to knock all the breath out of her.

She hesitates on the brink of a reply. It's her overwhelming instinct to call him_ sir_, like last time – but that's all wrong in this setting, everything's changed tonight. At the same time, she somehow can't quite bring herself to call him_ Arnold. _It seems too intimate and casual, somehow. As if they're equals. And she doesn't feel as if they're equals at all. 

'Good evening,' she manages.

The butler pulls out a chair for her. She sits down. He steps back.

'What would you like to drink, madam?' the butler asks her.

'A glass of white wine would be wonderful, thank you,' she says hesitantly.

'Very good, madam.'

The butler leaves the room discreetly, closing the door with a gentle click. She finds herself wondering anxiously what he thinks about her and this situation. Then she realises with a sudden shock that it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all. Just as it doesn't matter what the chauffeur thought when he was driving her here.

All that matters is what _he_ thinks. The extraordinary man sitting at the table beside her. As if he's the only other person in the world.

Oh, how she wants him.

He's looking at her intently, she realises. Appraisingly. Making no attempt to hide it.

'You look very beautiful tonight,' he says.

He doesn't sound gushing or flattering. Far from it. His tone is factual, cool and simple. A calm, dispassionate statement of fact.

Her heart jumps up inside her, suddenly beating a little faster.

'Thank you,' she says uncertainly. 'I'm sure I don't, but – thank you.'

There's a long silence. He studies her for endless seconds. She thinks there's an unnervingly detached, distant, impersonal quality to his scrutiny, As if she's some interesting artwork he's assessing. She suddenly feels shockingly self- conscious and vulnerable, like a bug under a microscope. She desperately wants to be somewhere else entirely.

And paradoxically, at the exact same time, she wants to be as close to him as humanly possible, and never, ever leave his side.

'Tell me about yourself,' he says unexpectedly.

She can't conceal her own surprise at the question. His half-smile is enigmatic.

'I'm becoming aware that I know very little about you. Indulge me.'

'Well,' she says awkwardly. 'I'm afraid there's not much to tell...'

'You grew up in New York, am I correct?'

She nods.

'Well, in a way - we lived in the Hamptons when I was a child. But we moved to an apartment in the Bowery when I was six.'

'Rather a change of neighbourhood. Why was that?'

His demeanour is one of total, undivided attention. Something inside her urges her to soft-pedal her reply to his question – the real answer's too sad, too dark, too unpalatable to share at all easily. But with those dark eyes fixed on her, she literally can't find anything to say apart from the truth.

'That was when my father died. His car went off a cliff near our house. My mother said it was an accident. Some people said it was suicide. It turned out he was bankrupt, after he died. He owed a lot of people a lot of money. That was why my mother and I had to move.'

'Your mother didn't remarry?'

She shakes her head.

'She was kind of a recluse, after what happened. Always worried sick people would see how tough we really had it, obsessed with keeping up appearances – she was scared to let anyone even come to our apartment. Whatever help we got from Daddy's family, it all went on me – sending me to the right schools and summer camps, paying for my debutante season. I feel bad about that, if I'm honest. I must have been a terrible disappointment.'

He watches her intently, unblinking.

'For what reason?'

'Oh, she was always obsessed with me making a good match – and when I fell for Rick, she was devastated. She died two days after we got married. They said it was heart failure, but I can't help thinking she really died of disappointment.'

There's a long, long pause. When he speaks again, his direct words take her completely by surprise.

'Why did you marry a man with so little to offer you?'

'Because I loved him.'

The words come immediately, un-thought-out and automatic. Shock hits her hard as she realises she's just spoken in the past tense. She carries on quickly, hoping he hasn't noticed.

'He's a good man. He made me laugh, and he didn't take things seriously, and he made everything seem so fun and easy. He just - swept me off my feet, I guess.'

Silence gathers around them. In the flickering golden candlelight, his eyes never leave her.

'You are a very... fascinating ... woman,' he says quietly.

And she looks back at him wordlessly, and she's hit by a tidal wave of conflicting emotions. Vulnerability and need and trust and fear and yearning all at once. She feels as if she's just stripped naked before him in a way that's infinitely more real than any physical disrobing. More frightening, and perhaps more dangerous.

There's a discreet rap on the door. They both glance towards it.

'Enter,' he calls out.

The door opens. The butler steps into the room and stands to one side.

'Dinner is served, sir,' he says.

Two uniformed maids come through, their silver trays laden down with plates, and begin to set them down on the table.

It's an extraordinarily lavish feast. There are fresh oysters on a hillock of crushed ice, and boiled lobsters, and smoked salmon and caviar and truffles. The frugal, penny-pinching good housewife inside her is appalled and astonished by the tragic waste of it all. He eats sparingly – a light green salad, a few sticks of asparagus, some fresh fruit. He doesn't even touch the crystal decanters of red and white wine, he just drinks water. And she's got hardly any appetite at all.

She can feel desire twisting and squirming deep inside her, like a nest of snakes in her stomach.

She's endlessly distracted by his physical proximity to her. Her gaze keeps wandering across the table to look at his pale elegant impeccably-manicured hands. She can't help imagining them on her body again. Exciting and tantalising and tormenting her to the brink of feverish insanity.

Finally, the maids come in to clear the plates. Most of them haven't even been touched. The butler stands in doorway, supervising their activity.

'Will that be all, sir?'

'Yes, thank you, Thomas. I'll ring if I require anything further.'

'Very good, sir.'

The maids and the butler leave. The door clicks shut.

They're all alone together in the flickering candlelight. She can feel the tension gathering in and in and in around them. His slow half-smile makes her feel like there isn't quite enough oxygen in the huge room all of a sudden. It's an effort to get enough of it down without audibly gulping at it.

'I have something for you,' he says unexpectedly.

She feels startled. He always seems to do this, in any number of ways. Taking her by surprise, wrong-footing her expectations. Keeping her slightly and perpetually off balance at any given moment.

'Since our last meeting, I've come to believe that I'd care to see rather more of you. To have you at my disposal, in fact. And I feel you wouldn't be entirely averse to such an arrangement.'

Disbelief floods her mind. Wonderment. Ecstasy.

Rick's face swims briefly before her eyes. But it seems very far away, all of a sudden. As if it's something she's seen a very long time ago, in a half-remembered dream.

'I intend to send for you on a regular basis. To be used for my amusement, as and when and how I please. I'm assuming your husband will be – obliging – as concerns your frequent absences. He has fifty thousand excellent reasons not to make waves.'

That chilly, private smile again. She's abruptly reminded of the darker areas of his character. He's manipulative. Coldly calculating. In some ways, downright evil.

And she adores him. She can't help it.

'If you're to be my property in every way that matters, I'm inclined towards making a certain – statement of ownership, shall we say. A permanent token of whom you belong to, now.'

He puts something on the table. A black velvet box, perhaps six inches square and an inch tall.

She reaches for it uncertainly. Her hand hesitates midway. She looks at him, and he nods almost imperceptibly. She picks it up and opens it.

Lying on the black velvet interior is a necklace of extraordinarily intricately woven pearls and diamonds – a double row of them, maybe half an inch in width. It glitters and sparkles wildly in the flickering candlelight.

'Not as crass as a collar, or as apt to invite unwanted questions . But a certain – reminder – of your new position.'

She just stares down at it. Stunned into total silence.

When she speaks, her voice is tiny and unsure.

'I – I can't accept this. I can't possibly -'

That private little half smile again. As if at some sardonic joke he'll never, ever share.

'You misunderstand me, Elizabeth. I'm not _asking_ you to accept anything.'

He rises from the table. He picks up the necklace and comes up behind her.

'Of course, you're to remove it when you bathe. At all other times, it remains in place. Do you understand me?'

'Yes, sir,' she murmurs shakily.

He's standing right behind her, now. She catches the smell of his aftershave again, and it's like a drug to her. That expensive complex citrusy smell leaves her weak and dissolving with sheer need. She feels a tickly sensation as he brushes a stray lock of her hair out of the way to fasten the necklace's clasp at the back of her neck.

'Perfection,' he murmurs. 'Stand up.'

She obeys him. He takes her arm and leads her over to an elaborately gilt-framed mirror that's hung above a long, low side table. She looks at the reflection of the two of them standing side by side. She focuses on the necklace.

It's not quite as tight as a choker, but closer-fitting than most necklaces. It sits right at the base of her neck, brushing her fragile collar bones.

It's awesomely, dazzlingly, breathtakingly beautiful.

His hand goes stroking over it, then moves upwards to her neck. His fingers trail across her sensitive skin lightly, reflectively, exciting nerve endings she never even knew she had.

She arches her head back and moans deep down in her throat. A sound that just says _please._

'To be used as and when I please,' he says softly.

He pushes her down on the low side table, so her torso's pressed against the shiny-veneered dark wood. His hand goes to the skirt of her dress, sliding it upwards, and she cries out again as he finds her nondescript cotton panties and rips them away from her.

'Like this,' he whispers in her ear.

There's no foreplay, no preamble, but she doesn't need it. From her perspective, the whole damned _night's _been foreplay, his every glance and smile and word have been exciting her into the next world and back, and when he drives into her from behind she's so wet and ready it's all pleasure, all sweet delicious sensation, and she cries out sharply and wonders if any of the staff can hear her, and she realises she doesn't even care.

And right on the brink of a shattering orgasm, she glances up and sees in the mirror that her hair's come down from its careful updo, and it's flying round her flushed and feverish face in wild disarray, and her carefully applied mascara's smeared round her eyes like a panda, and she realises she doesn't care about that either. None of it matters, nothing but the extraordinary physical sensations that block out the whole world. And she knows with a combination of terror and melting rapture that this man could do anything to her, anything at all, and she wouldn't even begin to know how to defend herself.

And the diamonds round her neck throw the candlelight in a million directions. A million shards of shattered light. A million tiny stars.


	7. Chapter 7

8

She walks slowly up the creaking, moonlit wooden stairs. As if she's trying to delay the moment when she reaches her apartment door. She's horribly aware that in the very near future, she'll have to deliver a credible performance. She'll have to seem like a woman who's just been through a horrible ordeal, and wants to forget all about it.

She isn't sure if she can.

Her heart's racing. She feels dizzy, unreal, feverish with wonderment.

She feels fully alive as she hasn't done in years. Maybe ever.

Her key turns in the lock, and she steps into the apartment.

She walks through the hallway as quietly as she can. She glances through the half-open living room door. Rick's asleep in an armchair. There's a half-empty whisky glass on the carpet beside him.

She realises that, when he got in from wherever he's been tonight, he intended to stay up for her return. But he drunk too much to stay awake – or maybe he was just tired. The latter, maybe. The clock across the room says it's two in the morning.

Relief hits her hard.

And she's tiptoeing past, towards the bedroom, when she steps on a creaky floorboard and he wakes up. He awakens like a man who's found himself in five feet of water, all panicky flailing and sudden disorientation.

'Lizzie.' She can see him fully surfacing from sleep as he speaks. He rubs his eyes. 'Jesus, what time is it?'

She pauses in the living room doorway, and looks in at him.

'It's just gone two.' She keeps her voice neutral, expressionless. 'I'm going to bed.'

As he looks back at her, she can see his confusion and disorientation. She can see him wondering whether to ask her any questions about what happened tonight. She can see him wondering whether he really wants to know. She can see him wondering whether she really wants to tell him. She's suddenly worried about what he's seeing. She struggles to keep her face blank, but she's not sure she can hide her fever-bright eyes and the flush on her cheeks. She's about to hurry onwards to the bedroom when he speaks unexpectedly.

'I've never seen that dress before.'

'It's been in the wardrobe for days. Aunt Marie bought it for me when I met her last.'

She's taken a single step towards the bedroom, when his voice – disbelieving, aghast - freezes her in her tracks.

'The hell is _that?'_

'The hell is what?' she asks, but her heart's plummeting inside her, and she knows.

'That thing around your neck is _what._ He gave that to you?'

Suddenly, she feels more weary than anything else. She just wants to go to bed and sleep and sleep and leave all this till the morning. At the same time, she knows she needs to tell him. She walks into the living room, and sits down on one faded green brocade armchair. The light in here's sad and frail, a single too-dim lamp burning between them. After the mega scale of Arnold Rothstein's estate, the small cluttered room seems weirdly tiny, too tiny for human beings to live in at all easily. Claustrophobia stuffs her throat with cotton wool. The chair she's sitting in seems hard and uncomfortable as it never really has done before.

She takes a long deep breath, and forces herself to speak.

'What you said before - how this might not be the last time. You were right. He said so. He says if I don't keep on seeing him when he likes, he'll call in your debt. I'm sorry.'

She doesn't even know how she should be sounding. That's the hell of it. She's heard of stage actors asking _what's my motivation in this scene._ She can understand why, because she simply doesn't know how to act right now. Whether she should seem traumatised or philosophical or scared or furious. She settles for speaking in a quiet toneless voice, not quite meeting his eyes,

'That's why he gave me this.' She indicates the necklace she's wearing. 'He wants me to wear it. All the time. A token of his, his, I don't know...'

'Affection?' The word comes out bitter enough to burn. 'Yeah sure, like he gives a damn about you or anyone else. He just likes fucking people's lives up, end of story. We've just got to sit tight and bide our time here, Lizzie - it won't last. He'll get bored, move on. Forget about the whole thing. Hell, we can sell that thing when he's moved on to the next little game - maybe take it to Goldman's round the corner, see what he'll give us for it, and –'

It's as if all her own secret, insidious terrors have come to life, and are speaking to her - taunting her in this room that's so much smaller and sadder and less welcoming than she ever imagined before – and it momentarily enrages her. She forgets where she is, who she's with, how she's meant to be feeling. She speaks far too fiercely.

'The hell do you know what he thinks and doesn't think? You think you know anything about him?'

She takes a long deep shuddering breath. When she speaks again, her voice is tense with suppressed fury.

'And I'm not selling it. If you think I'll ever sell it, you can go to _hell.'_

And she's said too much somehow, she realises in the silence that follows, she's only spoken a few sentences, but she's said far too much. The slowly dawning look on his face hurts her heart. Disbelief. Bewilderment. Betrayal. As if he's just looked round, and seen that his most trusted supporter's crossed over to the enemy camp.

He looks at her for a long, long time. As if he's seeing aspects of her appearance and demeanour tonight for the very first time. Finally, she just can't stand it any more.

'Don't look at me like that,' she says quietly.

'How am I supposed to look at you? You look like – Jesus, I don't know _what _you look like.' He hesitates for a second, then plunges on. 'You look like you've been having the time of your life.'

Another too-long pause. She can feel the tension gathering in around them.

'This is getting too fucked up, Lizzie,' he says tonelessly. 'I don't know how to handle it.'

'_You_ don't know how to handle it? You left_ me_ to handle it, remember?'

She can feel her overpowering guilt catching fire inside her. Blazing into anger with terrifying speed, and then into fury. A fury that's cold this time, cold and precise and deliberate. Slowing her speech instead of quickening it. Making every word come out slow and perfectly enunciated, edged with purest ice.

'You started this. You started all of this. Don't you_ dare_ try and make me feel bad.'

He looks at her. She looks back. For a second, a fleeting second, it's as if she sees him through the eyes of another woman completely. A coldly observant stranger who sees his dirty, rumpled clothes and his faint smell of whisky and his hapless helpless bewildered air.

The stranger sees a buffoon. A failure. A joke.

The stranger thinks that he's a pathetic thing. Perhaps he always has been.

And then she's looking at him through her own eyes again, and she's utterly terrified, because he's just as he's always been, he's _Rick,_ he's the man she loves and always has done, and she doesn't know what the hell just happened.

'I'm going to bed,' she says quietly.

She walks into the bedroom, and sits down on the edge of the bed.

Her hands go to the clasp at the back of the necklace. Unfastening it with the utmost care.

She closes her eyes and hears Arnold Rothstein's voice, deep down in her mind.

He says _to be used when and as I please._

Despite the warmth of the summer night, she shivers.


	8. Chapter 8

9

It's a blazingly hot afternoon, and Elizabeth's walking towards the Plaza, where she's meeting Aunt Marie for lunch.

There's a spring in her step and a smile on her lips.

Whether she should be happy or not, she is.

She's very aware of the necklace that's hidden under the cream cotton scarf wrapped round her neck. It feels ridiculous, deliberately concealing something so beautiful, but that's exactly why she's concealing it. Why she's lived in little scarves and high-necked blouses, for the four days that have passed since she received it. It's far too good to wear openly with her normal daytime wardrobe - the effect is jarringly incongruous, inviting far too many questions even from the casual observer.

But whether it's visible or not, the very knowledge that it's there gives her a warm glow inside. She knows it's like a badge of ownership,_ his_ ownership, and she loves it for that more than anything.

Rick hasn't even mentioned it out loud, since the night she came back. It's like an elephant in the room of their marriage, what her scarves and high-necked blouses are concealing, what she's taking off right before they go to bed. They haven't argued again, but in a way, what that unprecedented row has given way to is somehow worse. An infinitely careful politeness, worlds away from their usual easy, effortless intimacy. They tiptoe round each other and say_ please_ and _thank you_ like strangers, and don't talk about anything that matters.

And underneath it all, there's that constant sense of simmering tension. Undercurrents of doubt, betrayal and bewilderment on his side. Undercurrents of guilt and resentment on hers.

Remembering that, Elizabeth feels as if a dark grey cloud's passing across some inner sun – the warmth has gone for a second, everything's chilly and shadowy and ominous.

But she forces it out of her mind. She won't think about it, she tells herself. Not today.

As usual, she knows she looks out of place among the elegantly-dressed society housewives in the restaurant. But as she follows the waiter past the other tables, she realises she doesn't care at all. It's as if she can constantly feel the necklace beneath her scarf, touching her skin lightly, and giving her a deep inner confidence she's never had before. And it makes her walk with a spring in her step and her head as high as a duchess's, like she's never had a care in the world.

Fleetingly, she wonders when he'll call for her again.

Aunt Marie gets up as she approaches the table, and they hug each other. Aunt Marie draws back and looks at her.

'Why, Elizabeth - whatever's happened?'

'Nothing,' Elizabeth says, startled. 'Why?'

'You're positively _glowing,_ dear girl. And - my goodness, wha_t is _that –'

Sixty or not, she's got eyes like an eagle. She only has to catch the tiniest hint of a glitter from beneath Elizabeth's scarf, and she's on it. Elizabeth draws back quickly, but even as she does, Aunt Marie's nudging the scarf aside and revealing the necklace beneath it.

'My good God in heaven,' Aunt Marie says softly.

'It's nothing,' Elizabeth says quickly. 'I've had it for a long time.'

'Elizabeth,_ please_. I may not be as young as I once was, but not a perfect idiot. And if there's one thing I know about on this earth, it's jewellery.'

Aunt Marie's astonished expression looks totally alien on her face. Elizabeth doesn't think she's ever seen her look so much as fleetingly impressed, before.

'That's quite an extraordinary piece. I can't begin to guess at the value.'

Elizabeth doesn't know what to say. She rearranges her scarf where it was and sits down, feeling flustered. Ridiculously, she's praying that Aunt Marie will let the subject drop.

'What's going on?' Aunt Marie asks suddenly.

'Nothing,' Elizabeth says uneasily. 'What do you mean?'

'Oh, for heaven's sake, Elizabeth. You know perfectly well what I mean. Please tell me that odious young fool isn't robbing jewellers now.'

'It's not stolen,' she says quickly.

'So wherever did he find the money?'

'He didn't give it to me,' Elizabeth blurts out. 'It's nothing to do with him.'

Aunt Marie's eyebrows have shot up. Her whole face is an alert, imperious question. Elizabeth desperately wishes she could tell her the truth. But she can't. Of course she can't.

Elizabeth drops her gaze to the table.

'It was a gift from a friend,' she mutters.

A long, nakedly dubious silence from Aunt Marie's side of the table. Her expression makes it crystal clear what she thinks of the word _friend_. There's a knowing glint in her sharp little eyes. As if she can't decide whether to be thoroughly disapproving or secretly rather pleased.

'A very generous_ friend_, apparently,' she says at last, archly.

Elizabeth bites her lip.

'He's been very kind to me,' she says, and then realises with horror that she just said_ he. _

There's another tense silence.

'Well,' Aunt Marie says ambiguously. 'I'd drone on at you for the next three hours concerning propriety, and virtue, and that sort of thing - but you're no child, and I'm no prude. I just fervently hope you know what you're doing.'

The waiter comes over to take their order. As if taking pity on her, Aunt Marie tactfully lets the subject drop. They talk about people they're both aware of, and the more exalted figures who move in Aunt Marie's circles only. Elizabeth desperately wants to ask about Arnold and Carolyn Rothstein - what Aunt Marie knows about their marriage, whether she's heard any fragments of gossip about either of them. But good sense stops her at the last minute. Aunt Marie's as sharp as the proverbial tack, and won't need many more clues to get a damned good idea of the general situation – if not its full dark intricacy.

In fact, Elizabeth thinks uncomfortably, it's far from impossible that Aunt Marie's already made a connection between the mysterious necklace and the odd questions Elizabeth asked her concerning Carolyn Rothstein last time they met.

Finally, lunch is over, and they're finishing their coffees, and Aunt Marie is paying the bill, and they're walking out of the hotel foyer.

'Well – goodbye, Aunt Marie,' says Elizabeth as they pause outside the hotel's revolving doors, preparing to go their separate ways.

'Goodbye, Elizabeth. It's been delightful to see you, as ever.'

They embrace again. Elizabeth breathes in that familiar sweet, heavy floral perfume.

'And _take care.'_

Aunt Marie's last words come out with slow, deliberate significance. Her eyes don't leave Elizabeth's own as she speaks them.

Then she's turning away and trotting down the pavement, her high heels clicking out sharply as she walks.

Back home, in the silent apartment, Elizabeth's plagued by sudden doubts and worries.

She remembers Aunt Marie saying _I just fervently hope you know what you're doing._

She wonders whether she really does.

She gazes into the mirror in the hallway, and thinks she looks different in a way she can't quite place. Simultaneously brighter and darker. As if she's somehow changed a great deal in the space of a few short weeks.

The doorbell rings out sharply through the little apartment. She puts the door on the latch and goes downstairs to the main entrance, walking through the foyer and opening the front door. A uniformed telegram courier is standing outside.

'Mrs Buchanan?'

'That's me.' She takes the folded, sealed telegram from him. 'Thank you very much.'

He walks away. The front door swings shut in a sudden gust of wind, slamming hard. She barely notices, barely hears it.

She opens the telegram with hands that are suddenly shaking slightly.

And reads, in smudgy, anonymous, typewritten capitals:

TONIGHT. EIGHT THIRTY. WILL SEND MY CAR.


	9. Chapter 9

He stands by the huge curtained window of the sumptuous billiards room.

All stillness. All presence. All poise.

There's a cold vertiginous dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach as she looks at him.

Whether she's scared by him or by the extraordinary intensity of her reaction to him, she doesn't know. She just knows that, whatever she feels when she sees him, it seems to get a little stronger every single time.

The door clicks quietly shut behind the butler's departing back. They're alone together.

She steps towards him slowly. As if she's hypnotised or sleepwalking. She can see herself in the huge gilt-framed mirror at the end of the room. She's wearing the tobacco-brown lace dress again. It's the only thing she owns that does justice to the necklace. There's no carefully-arranged scarf to hide it tonight. It glitters in the low, intimate light from the green-shaded lamp that hangs over the huge baize billiard table, that's the only light in the room.

'Elizabeth,' he says.

He takes a step towards her.

'I've missed you.'

His voice is quiet and enigmatic. Her heart leaps up inside her.

'I've missed you, too,' she says tentatively.

He comes up behind her. His hands go to her breasts, caressing them with an indescribable delicate skill that makes her shudder helplessly. His mouth's by her ear, and his warm breath tickles her hair slightly as he speaks.

'I've been thinking about what I'm going to do with you this evening. I've been thinking it may be time for another little dose of pain.'

It's like his quiet words are setting her on fire. There's a deep burning ache between her legs, intensifying further and further second by second. She presses her thighs together, and feels herself almost go into spasm with desire.

'It's not a punishment, precisely. You've done nothing to displease me.'

As he talks, he's undoing the long row of tiny buttons that run down the side of the dress. Intricate as they are, he doesn't miss a beat.

'It's simply for my entertainment.'

The dress slithers to the floor round her feet. He unhooks her bra and coaxes it away from her unresisting body. She's still standing with her back to him, wearing panties, stockings, suspenders and nothing else.

'And I can do as I like with you. Am I correct?'

'Yes, sir,' she murmurs, and her voice is breathless and tense with longing.

'Bend over the table, Elizabeth,' he says.

His tone's soft, silky, soothing. Combined with the implicit menace of the command, it makes her physically shiver with fear and longing combined. She does what he says, stretching her torso over the top of the billiard table. The green baize is slightly coarse and scratchy beneath her naked breasts, her bullet-hard nipples. The friction's tantalising, delicious, feeding her thrill even further.

She half-sees, half-feels him coming up right behind her. He takes hold of her wrists, and ties them together behind her back. She can't see what he's used, but she thinks it's probably a silk scarf. It's not painful in itself – the fabric's ultra-soft, and he hasn't tied it tightly enough to hurt - but she can't get her hands apart at all. She can sense his presence an inch or so behind her, can sense him standing there in his immaculate tailoring. Cool and formal and elegant and detached as if he's in some exclusive gentlemen's club, making idle conversation about the Stock Exchange.

She's overpoweringly aware of his ownership, his control, his superiority.

He pulls her panties down so they're round her knees. Somehow, she realises, she feels more obscenely exposed than if he'd just taken them off her completely. He runs a leisurely, unhurried hand up between her legs. When he finds the hot slick wetness between them, she can't stop herself from crying out loud.

'Oh, Elizabeth.' That dark, knowing, musing voice turns her legs to jelly. 'You want it very, very badly, don't you?'

'Yes, sir,' she whispers in reply.

His finger finds her clitoris and presses down on it just hard enough, just light enough. There's a second of purest mind-blowing sensation. She makes a tiny tense whimpering sound that communicates all the pent-up longing in the world.

'But it doesn't matter what you want, does it? It doesn't matter in the slightest.'

His hand leaves her, and he steps back. Twisting her head to one side, she sees him walking over to an ornate walnut cabinet. His steps are unhurried, as if he has all the time in the world. He opens a door in it and takes something out. With a mixture of cold fear and sick heart-pounding excitement, she sees that it's a thin, flexible, vicious-looking cane.

He walks towards her very slowly, his slow movements feeding her fear. She knows that's deliberate, calculated.

And the knowledge makes her think she could come without so much as a single touch down there. Just from the sheer force of the thrill running through her.

He comes up right behind her again. He strokes the tip of the cane up the inside of her thigh. It touches her sex for a second, just a second – something hard and cold and precise and unyielding - and she jerks helplessly as if it's electric.

'How many strokes. I wonder?'

His voice is thoughtful, meditative. The tip of the cane runs lightly up and down her thigh.

'I think... exactly as many as I feel like inflicting,' he says casually, and then without warning he draws it back and slashes it down across her bare buttocks.

There's no way of knowing how long the ordeal's going to go on for. From Elizabeth's point of view, it seems like an eternity. Each blow is interspersed with long, long seconds of fathomless silence. She can sense that he's totally focused on what he's doing. She can sense how much it's arousing him. By the time he finishes she's sobbing helplessly, hot tears running down her face and falling onto the top of the billiard table, leaving dark spots on the green baize.

And she's so, so, so wet. That terrible treacherous excitement. Like her body's a traitor in league with him.

He bends over her and murmurs in her ear.

'There's nothing I can't do to you, and nothing I won't. Do you understand that, Elizabeth?'

Her voice is hoarse, choked by tears. 'Yes, sir.'

He takes hold of her shoulders. As if she doesn't weigh anything at all, he turns her round. She's lying back on the billiard table now, her bound hands underneath her back, the welts from the cane sore and burning where they meet the scratchy fabric. Her legs are spread obscenely wide, open and vulnerable to his every whim.

He doesn't fully undress. He just unbuttons his tailored black trousers and takes his cock out, hard as iron. The physical evidence of how much he's been enjoying all this makes her shiver with desire.

'Keep your eyes open.' His voice is suddenly cold and commanding and urgent. 'Look at me.'

He drives himself into her slick swollen wetness, and his eyes burn into hers, and something about the eye contact brings with it a sort of sick dark intimacy that's terrible and wonderful simultaneously. As if he's both worlds away from her and closer than anyone's ever been in her life. As if he's looking deep into her soul, and seeing exactly what he's doing to it. As if there's no part of her body or mind, however secret or private or shameful, that he doesn't understand and own completely.

And when she comes, it's like a crazy firework display going off through her whole body, and her head's full of explosions and darkness and absolutely nothing else.

She feels him coming too, pumping into her body with a flood of sudden warmth.

For a few seconds, they stay where they are. His face is completely unreadable as she looks at it. His hair isn't even ruffled. He's breathing slightly harder than usual, and that's it.

He steps back and turns away from her, rearranging his clothing.

She's suddenly filled with an indescribable sense of loss. As if she literally can't get enough of him. As if she wants to be as close to him as she possibly can be. Always.

She steps forward unsteadily, picks up the brown dress that's lying on the floor nearby and starts putting it on. His voice comes unexpectedly from across the room.

'I've seen that dress before.'

She feels a little awkward, suddenly embarrassed.

'It's the best I've got, I'm afraid,' she says.

'It's very fetching,' he says dryly. 'But variety is, as they say, the spice of life.'

There's a moment's pause. Her fingers fumble to do up the intricate row of tiny buttons.

'I'll set up an account for you at Barneys,' he says. 'Charge what you like. I like to see you looking beautiful.'


	10. Chapter 10

She wakes up in the low, sagging bed next morning. Her hand immediately stretches out towards the other side of the mattress. When it finds nothing there but cold sheets, her eyes snap open and she sits up, suddenly wide awake. Rick wasn't here when she got in late last night, and he isn't here now.

She lies there for perhaps three minutes, tense and unsettled. The clock by the bed says it's only ten to six. It doesn't matter. She can't bear to lie here with only her racing thoughts for company. She knows she'll never get back to sleep, and she's suddenly filled with an unbearable restlessness.

In the bathroom, pale fresh early-morning sunlight filters in through the little frosted window. She runs herself a bath, and steam begins to fill the room.

As she takes off her nightdress, her hands gingerly brush against the marks from last night, the thin raised welts that the cane left across her buttocks and upper thighs. She runs her hands over them again, tracing their outlines, and she winces.

And then something in her touch changes, becoming voluptuous and lingering, and she feels like she's dissolving inside as she remembers how those marks got there.

She forces that feeling aside. She climbs into the bath and lies back, breathing in the warm steam and closing her eyes.

Everything feels slightly unreal, this morning. Disconnected. Dreamlike. She hasn't had anywhere near enough sleep, but she doesn't feel tired, exactly. She's simultaneously reeling with bone-deep exhaustion and wide awake, feverishly awake. An unsettling feeling. As if she's drunk or drugged.

She wonders where Rick's gone.

And she knows perfectly well that she should be feeling more than this vague diffuse creeping unease - she should be terrified by his unprecedented absence, worried sick, climbing the walls – but she isn't. If she's honest with herself, he isn't even uppermost in her thoughts.

Even though he's been away all night, even though she has no idea where he is right now and what he's doing, her thoughts keep on and on sliding back to Arnold.

It's like he's a drug to her. She can't keep her mind on anything else.

God, how she loves him.

When she gets out of the bath and towels herself off, the first thing she puts on is the necklace. She dresses in a high-necked cotton frock that conceals it, runs a brush through her hair and walks into the kitchen.

Even though she hasn't eaten a thing since lunchtime yesterday, she's got no appetite for breakfast. None at all. There's a tense fluttering gnawing anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach, a terrible restless uncertainty. Suddenly, she needs to be everywhere at once, doing everything, and she puts on her housecoat and attacks the apartment with a furious manic energy. Beating the rugs. Scrubbing the kitchen floor till her arms ache. Washing the windows. Cleaning out the cooker. And the clock on the wall says seven o'clock and then eight o'clock and then nine o'clock and she doesn't even notice it happening.

Tense and jittery as she is, the sound of the front door opening on the silence makes her almost jump out of her skin.

Rick walks into the kitchen. He's unshaven, in rumpled clothes that look slept-in. She can smell the sour odour of sweat and drink. She gets up from where she's been on her knees cleaning out behind the refrigerator. For a long tense moment, she just stares at him. The refrigerator's thin insectile buzzing noise is the only sound in the world.

'Where have you been?' she demands.

'Do you really care?'

There's a hurt raw sullen edge to his voice, a bruised and wounded vulnerability. That cold rush of guilt hits her again, immediately turning into resentment and antagonism. Her eyes go to the clock across the room.

'It's nearly ten o'clock,' she says tightly. 'You should be at work. Do you want to lose this job, too?'

'That's all you care about? Seriously?'

She looks back at him, frightened. It occurs to her that he might be having some kind of breakdown.

'What's the matter with you?' she bursts out plaintively.

'What's the matter with me?' He gives a short, wild, ragged laugh that catches in his throat. 'I'm worried about grain prices in Nebraska, Lizzie, that's what's the matter with me, I'm worried who's going to win the World Series next year, that's what's the _matter _– what the hell do you_ think_ is the matter?'

He falls silent. His bloodshot eyes are hurt, betrayed. There's a deep sadness there that's hard for her to look at.

'You're wearing it again, aren't you?' he asks unexpectedly.

She bites her lip. 'I have to. You know that.'

'Don't give me that shit. You don't_ have_ to do a goddamn thing in here. You think he can see you right now?'

With a terrible sense of pressure and conflict, she turns away from him. She runs a hand over her forehead hard and slow, like an iron, as if to smooth out invisible creases. He steps towards her, grabs her wrist hard and pulls her towards him.

'_Lizzie._ Listen to me. We could run away. Go somewhere else, somewhere he can't find us. Start again.'

The scared desperation of his sweaty grip freaks her out. He smells bad, too. The high raw feverish whisky-and-chopped-onion stink of unwashed drunk. She wrenches herself away from him hard, trying to hide her instinctive rush of revulsion.

'You're talking crazy.' Anxiety flutters under the surface of her words. 'You're not making sense.'

He looks back at her. There's something nakedly defeated about the slumped set of his shoulders.

'Sure. I get it. You don't want to leave.'

'There are practicalities to think about.' She tries to keep her tone reasonable, pragmatic, unemotional. 'We've got bills to pay. We've signed a lease on this place.'

'Yeah.' He echoes her words in a flat dull voice – there's something tense and bitter under the surface that says she's making excuses. 'We've signed a lease on this place.'

He stands there in the kitchen and stares at her, unblinking. She gets the feeling he's seeing too much, too clearly. That frightens her more than anything. She doesn't know quite why, but it does.

'I guess you wish I was _him,' _he says unexpectedly.

A long, unbearable silence. Instinctive denial freezes in her throat. She knows it'll sound like the trite empty obvious lie it is. She knows he can read the truth in her eyes.

Suddenly, the atmosphere's suffocating her. Poisoning her. She needs to get away.

She takes off her housecoat and hangs it up on the hook by the door.

She says abruptly, 'I'm going out.'

She grabs her keys and her battered black handbag and walks out of the apartment. Her footsteps echo on the creaky wooden stairs. Out in the sunny morning, she walks hard and fast to nowhere, eyes staring straight ahead and seeing nothing. The streets around her gradually become unfamiliar. The houses and the people and the cars dissolve in a sudden haze of tears.


	11. Chapter 11

She's sitting in the back of the Rolls Royce as it glides through the hot electric night, past the neon signs of Broadway and the tiny, distant lights on the Hudson River. Arnold is sitting next to her. She's starting to think of him as Arnold, now. A new level of intimacy is entering their relationship, little by little. It doesn't detract from the submission she feels towards him, but actually intensifies it. It makes his absolute ownership of her feel all the more real, all the more intense, all the more delicious.

His hand rests lightly on hers. It gives her a warm feeling of reassurance to feel it there.

'We're here,' he says.

She looks out of the window curiously. They left the busy, central streets a while ago. The car's drawing up at the kerb of a dark, narrow alley. Widely-spaced streetlights give off a thin pale inadequate light. On either side of them, tall and forbidding-looking dark blocks face each other. They're not quite derelict, but far from well-maintained. There's no sign of what might and might not be inside. Maybe the very cheapest of apartments. Maybe sweatshop factory space.

'Wait for us round the corner,' Arnold says to the driver as they get out.

She takes his hand, and they walk together down the empty street. There's no other sound but their footsteps and the faint, ghostly suggestion of distant traffic from a couple of blocks away. He leads her over to an unmarked door. Its dark paint is chipped and scarred and faded. There's absolutely no reason why anyone would knock on it if they didn't know what was on the other side. Looking startlingly out of place in his immaculate and supremely-tailored evening wear, Arnold knocks twice, fast. Then he pauses. Then he knocks twice more.

The door opens silently. A heavyset bald man in a dinner jacket's standing there facing them. As he sees who it is, he snaps to attention.

'Good evening, Mr Rothstein, sir. Good evening, madam.'

The door closes. The heavyset man leads them down a corridor that looks as if it belongs to a disused factory. The walls are dank, sweating concrete, as is the uneven oil-stained floor. Nobody speaks a word. The only sound is their footsteps, and the hollow repetitive sound of water dripping somewhere nearby.

The heavyset man ushers them through another door, equally unassuming-looking, at the end of the hallway.

Holding Arnold's hand tightly, Elizabeth steps into another world. Noise and colour and extravagant opulence seem to explode around them. Everywhere she looks, there are dinner-jacketed men and evening-gowned women clicking glasses together and raising them in giggling toasts. Crisply-uniformed waiters circulate between the tables in endless motion, popping champagne corks and ferrying silver trays of drinks here and there. The thick air smells of Havana cigars and Parisian perfume.

In the centre of the huge room, there's a dancefloor, and a few couples are dancing together. On the edge of the dancefloor, a jazz band in crisp black and white evening dress are playing a riotously upbeat rendition of _Sweet Georgia Brown._

Elizabeth turns to Arnold, stunned and enraptured.

'What an _amazing _place,' she says breathlessly.

That characteristic small private smile touches the very edges of his mouth.

'The best in the city. I should know. I own it.'

The head waiter's hurrying over as Arnold speaks. He greets them obsequiously, and takes her full-length black cashmere coat from her. Beneath it, she's wearing a full-length evening dress of heavy, slithery satin. It's the deepest crimson in the world. Any deeper and it would be black. Its heart-shaped bodice leaves her shoulders and the upper slope of her breasts bare. It fits her like a skin and flows with her every movement, fluid as cool water.

And she's wearing the necklace. Of course she's wearing the necklace.

The waiter sweeps them over towards a table in the very centre of the huge, noisy room. She sees heads turning as they pass. Arnold nods to a few people in passing, returning their enthusiastic greetings briefly. She's overwhelmingly aware of countless eyes on her, of a level of visibility she's never known before in her life. She'd never have dreamed that she'd enjoy that feeling. But tonight, part of her does. Most of her does.

They reach the table and sit down, the waiter pulling out their seats for them simultaneously.

'What would you like to drink tonight, Mr Rothstein, sir?' the waiter asks.

'I'll just have water, thank you. Elizabeth?'

'A glass of white wine would be lovely,' she says hesitantly. 'Thank you very much.'

The waiter hurries away. She looks at Arnold curiously.

'Don't you ever drink alcohol?' she asks.

'It's never appealed. I prefer to remain in control.'

Her eyes never leave his enigmatic face. She feels as if she can't possibly learn enough about him. Every tiny little detail of his character is endlessly fascinating to her.

It's the first time they've ever been out in public together. She's very aware of that, as she has been all night, and she wonders if it has some deeper significance. Feeling suddenly uncertain, she looks round the room again. She catches a lot of people turning their heads away quickly, trying to pretend they haven't just been staring at her. She wants to ask him if he's not concerned that word of this evening will get back to his wife, but she can't. The question seems disrespectful, somehow. Impertinent. Out of keeping with the unspoken boundaries and rules of their relationship.

As if he's just been reading her mind, he speaks unexpectedly, in a low confiding voice.

'For some time, my wife and I have been more partners than true husband and wife. It's very much a marriage of convenience, and we live largely separate lives. We remain together in public for the sake of propriety and convenience, and because neither of us particularly wants the upheaval of a divorce.'

Her eyes never leave him. She doesn't know why she's so sure he's telling her the truth. But part of her senses that he wouldn't deign to lie to her concerning this subject. As if they both know that the banal, predictable excuses of a two-timing husband are far, far beneath him.

'You won't be on my arm at society balls, or charity fundraisers. Or to entertain public figures, for that matter. Discretion requires that Carolyn and I present a united front at such times. However, there's no reason why you can't openly accompany me elsewhere.'

She's astounded. Stunned. Delighted.

She doesn't want to say what she does next, but she finds she just can't stop herself.

'But... won't people talk?'

His shoulders rise and fall dismissively.

'People invariably do, and their chatter is of very little interest to me. My wife's not a fool. New York society will be well aware that you're my mistress, and so will she. But assuming the basic social conventions are observed, I'm quite confident that she will be... accommodating.'

The waiter brings their drinks to the table on a silver tray. As he walks away, Arnold sips at his glass of water and looks at her appraisingly. He speaks in a brisk businesslike tone.

'The next stage will be to get you an apartment. Somewhere I'll be able to visit you.'

She stares at him. Wide-eyed. Disbelieving.

'But... my husband...' she says uncertainly.

'Your husband will do as he's told. He can live there with you, provided he makes himself scarce when need be. Alternatively, he can leave. No matter.'

A cold chill runs through her body at his detached, dismissive voice.

But suddenly, Rick seems so far away. A distant shadowy figure in another life.

All that matters is here, now, _this._

It's like magic. Like a fairytale.

And the squealing jazz music and the shrieking laughter and the low steady background rumble of strangers' conversations all seem to fall silent as she gazes at him, and everything around them falls away into darkness, and there's nobody else in the room but him, nothing else in the world but his dark dark eyes.

At the end of the night, they drive back to his mansion in the country. The front door opens as the car pulls up by the steps. She sees the butler standing in front of the dazzlingly-lit hallway. She understands that they've all been waiting for Arnold, watching for him. She guesses that when he's supposed to be in residence, nobody goes to bed before he does.

'I'd very much like you to stay tonight,' he says as they walk through the house.

Behind her rush of sheer delight, Rick's image flashes in her mind again. Rick maybe sitting up in the living room and wondering where she is.

It feels like she's turning a light off in her mind. Plunging Rick's picture into total darkness.

'I'd love to,' she says softly, and Arnold takes her hand and leads her up the wide, curving, red-carpeted staircase.

That night, they lie together in his huge mahogany four-poster bed with its elaborately carved pillars, between Egyptian cotton sheets. She tentatively explores his body. It occurs to her that it's the first time they've ever been naked together, the first time she's ever really touched him. She revels in the sensation of the taut lean muscles under the satin-smooth skin. Her fingers caress him, adore him.

_I love you_, she wants to say, _I love you so much_, but something holds the words back. Because part of her's scared that he won't say it back to her, and she knows how appallingly it will hurt her if he doesn't.

'Elizabeth,' he murmurs to her.

Then he's kissing her,_ really_ kissing her, not a light teasing brush of the lips but something fierce and hungry and passionate. It's the first time, she realises dimly, that he's ever kissed her like that. And then the realisation's gone, all rational thought dissolving in a haze of sheer longing, a feverish and urgent need to lose herself in him.

And when he moves on top of her, the indescribable feeling of his skin against hers makes her cry out sharply, rubbing herself against him like a cat.

And when he drives himself deep inside her, she wraps her legs round him tightly, pulling him even closer, even deeper, never wanting to let him go.

And then they're lying side by side in the darkness, just holding each other, and she belongs to him body and soul, and he belongs to her.

His voice is unexpected on the heavy silence. There's a subtle tenderness to it that she's never heard there before.

'I wanted you the second I first saw you down that corridor.'

His hands stroke over her body lightly. A long slow pleasurable shiver runs through her.

'You got me,' she says.

He puts his arms around her. She lies there, and looks up at him. His smile is hard to read in the moonlight.

'I always get what I want. You know that.'

She presses up against him, harder. Breasts crushed against his chest. As if she could melt into him and become one single flesh.

The thought darts through her mind that she's never been so happy in all her life.


	12. Chapter 12

Arnold's car drops her off outside her apartment block. It's just gone ten-thirty in the morning. She's used to arriving back here under cover of darkness, and feels unnervingly exposed in the bright sunlight. Passers-by stare at the car openly, some actually stopping in their tracks to watch it. She knows it must look like a bizarre apparition on this street with its shabby-looking buildings, its discount store on the corner, its bits of old newspaper blowing in the gutters.

The chauffeur opens the door, and she gets out. She pretends not to notice people staring. Her long black coat covers up the crimson satin evening dress she's wearing underneath it. She didn't have any other clothes to change into at Arnold's house. Even though she looks outwardly normal, part of her can't wait to get inside and change into something more appropriate.

Rick's image comes trickling back into her mind like cold dirty water. She wonders how she'll break the news concerning the apartment. She'll just have to grit her teeth and say it, when he gets home that night. If he's not at home right now. Lately, his timekeeping has become disturbingly erratic, and she's pretty sure he's on thin ice and borrowed time in his current job.

It occurs to her fleetingly that her feelings towards him have, little by little, changed out of all recognition. Nowadays, he looms in her thoughts like a dark crevasse in a sunny meadow. When she thinks of him, her mind's all duty, all guilt, all tense suppressed resentment. He doesn't inspire any other emotions at all. Not any more.

As soon as her key turns in the lock, she knows immediately that he's not there. Something in the quality of the silence tells her she's alone in the peaceful, sunlit apartment. She's walking past the half-open kitchen door when something makes her stop in her tracks.

There's a letter on the red Formica-topped kitchen table. Positioned as it is, it's immediately, glaringly obvious.

Slowly, cautiously, she walks in and approaches it. It's not been folded or put in an envelope. It's just lying there, a closely written sheet of notepaper staring out into the room. Rick's big untidy writing looks bigger and untidier than ever. One look, and she immediately knows that he wrote it in a rush of wild emotion. That he didn't stop to think about what he was going to write before he wrote it.

She picks the letter up with hands that suddenly feel numb. She sits down at the rickety little table and reads:

_Dear Lizzie, _

_By the time you read this, I'll be someplace else. I'm sorry, Lizzie. A man can't live like this and face himself in the mirror every morning. I know it's all been my fault. If I hadn't gone to that goddamn club. Just wish I could turn back time. But I know it's all too late now. _

_I love you very much. I always will. _

_Rick. _


	13. Chapter 13

She walks into the Waldorf Hotel in an exquisite cream chiffon daytime dress that's as delicate as a cobweb. Endless intricate layers of the ultra-fine fabric swirl round her knees as she walks. She wears silk stockings and carries a black crocodile handbag with an intricate gold clasp. Her dark-chestnut hair shines in the sunlight. She looks like a princess.

When she reaches the restaurant's reception desk, the impeccably uniformed waiter behind it immediately jumps to ultra-respectful attention, smiling welcomingly at her.

'Good afternoon, madam. Have you booked a table?'

'Yes, thank you. I'm meeting Mrs Marie Vanderbilt for lunch at one-thirty.'

'Very good, madam, if you would care to follow me...'

As she follows the waiter through the elegant, noisy lunchtime restaurant, she has a weird feeling of déjà vu. She's been in this exact same place countless times before but suddenly it's changed out of all recognition. The way people treat her. The way people look at her. Everything.

When she reaches the table, Aunt Marie's there already. Aunt Marie stands up and embraces her.

'My notorious niece,' she murmurs.

She steps back slightly and holds Elizabeth lightly by the shoulders, looking at her. Elizabeth can see her mixed emotions. Disapproval is putting up a fair fight, but vicarious happiness is definitely winning.

'You look absolutely wonderful, Elizabeth,' she says.

They both sit down. A hovering waiter immediately appears to take their drinks order. They tell him what they'd like, and he leaves again.

'I hear people talking about you everywhere I go. The great Arnold Rothstein's mistress. Some of my acquaintances wanted me to invite you for dinner so they could come over and meet you for themselves. I said no, of course. I can't imagine you'd enjoy being gawped at like an animal in a zoo.'

'It's very strange,' Elizabeth says slowly. 'I'd never have imagined it would be like _this._ I've had people approaching me - dressmakers, jewellers, florists. Offering me all sorts of things for free, if I can put in a good word with Arnold. It's crazy.'

Aunt Marie looks at her, suddenly frowning. When she speaks, it's as if her question's been weighing on her mind, and she wants to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

'Have you heard any more from...?'

Elizabeth shakes her head. From the thinly-veiled distaste in Aunt Marie's voice, there's no question who she's referring to.

'Rick could be anywhere now. He'll never get back in touch. I just know it.'

Aunt Marie shrugs philosophically. 'Well I shan't pretend to be heartbroken – you know very well how I felt about the chap. I know you're never going to tell me what he did to necessitate running away from it all, and I've given up attempting to pry - but knowing you as I do, I can tell it's something frightful. I'd say you had the patience of a Job to put up with that man for as long as you did.'

Elizabeth feels suddenly uneasy. Rick's desertion is the one little dark spot in her mind, the single grey cloud in a clear blue sky. She remembers the sadness and loss in the brief letter he'd left for her. The almost palpable sense of helplessness.

'Maybe,' she says uncertainly. 'I don't know. I hope he's okay.'

Silence falls between them. Then Aunt Marie changes the subject, and conversation wanders away to lighter topics – people, events, the new Douglas Fairbanks movie that everyone's going to see. In no time at all, lunch is over, and a waiter's taking away their plates.

'Come back to my apartment for a coffee,' Elizabeth says impulsively. 'You just have to see it. I moved in two whole weeks ago, and it still doesn't seem quite real.'

Her new apartment's only a couple of blocks away. They walk into the luxurious modern building, through a tall glossy foyer. They get into the elevator, and a cheerful uniformed bellhop inside it presses the button to take them to the seventh floor. They step out onto a wide pale-carpeted corridor. Elizabeth stops at the white door at the end of it. She gets a key out of her handbag and unlocks the door.

They walk into a suite of elegant, spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, exquisitely decorated in the palest and most tasteful of complementary shades. Everything in here's coloured cream and biscuit and caramel and honey, with occasional touches of dark shiny mahogany. There's a thick soft carpet the colour of double cream. Fresh-cut flowers explode from Lalique crystal vases in every room. Creamy-pale tuberoses, perfectly in keeping with the overall colour scheme. The smell of them lingers on the air, sweet, dark, heavy and seductive.

'Isn't it beautiful?' Elizabeth says wonderingly. 'I can't believe I actually live here. It's like a wonderful dream.'

'Well, I must say, I'm impressed. He's certainly keeping you in considerable style.'

Aunt Marie falls silent as they walk through into the living room. She speaks again cautiously.

'I do hate to lower the tone, Elizabeth, but I wouldn't necessarily get too comfortable. _Mistress _is a rather impermanent position. If I'm to be the unwelcome little voice of cynicism, there's a real danger he could simply get bored one day and turf you out.'

Elizabeth shakes her head quickly.

'He put the apartment in my name. It was his idea. He said he wanted me to feel secure here, after – you know, what happened when I was a child. I never even knew he remembered that.'

'Well, well, well... wonders will never cease,' Aunt Marie says dryly. 'Perhaps the notorious Mr Rothstein actually cares about you.'

'He's the most wonderful man in the world,' Elizabeth says passionately, and she knows that Aunt Marie can hear in her voice just how much she means it.

For a long slow beat, Aunt Marie just looks at her. When Aunt Marie finally speaks, there's a new foreboding note in her voice.

'You worship the fellow, I can tell. But seriously, Elizabeth, I would advise a certain caution. One hears some extremely worrying things about him. And you don't tend to get _quite _that much smoke without fire.'

As if against her own better judgement, a little twinkle creeps back into her eye.

'But listen to me, being the voice of doom at such a time. It's an absolute fairytale. I admit it.'

Elizabeth smiles. She can't help smiling, lately.

'I'm so happy for you, Elizabeth,' says Aunt Marie.

The two women hug each other tightly.


	14. Chapter 14

She's coming out of the exclusive little salon on Fifth Avenue where she's just had her hair done, when she sees a man she vaguely recognises walking down the street towards her. At first she can't quite place him, then she can. Biff Hargensen. An old schoolmate of Rick's, slightly more than an acquaintance, but only slightly. Biff's family own paper mills, and he's never had to work a day in his life. It's been a good two years since she saw him last, but he hasn't changed a bit. With his round smooth-cheeked pink face and his fashionable clothes, he looks exactly like the vacuous, pampered little boy he is.

With a sudden cold shock, she remembers it was Biff who got Rick into that damned gambling club in the first place. The club where he got drunk and reckless and blundered into that fatal card game with Arnold.

She knows it's not exactly Biff's fault. He hasn't got second sight, he couldn't possibly have been expected to know what would happen that night. But even so, he's not the person she most wants to see in the world right now, to put it mildly. She finds herself hoping he won't notice her, and they can both just walk on by.

But as they draw closer, she sees the dawning recognition on his face. He stops walking. She does too.

'Lizzie? My God. You look _wonderful.'_

'Well, thank you, Biff,' she says, smiling politely. 'You're looking very well yourself.'

There's a moment's pause. She thinks there's something slightly peculiar about his side of it. A tension that seems quite out of place in this situation, two casual acquaintances stopping on the street to say hi.

'How's Rick?' Biff asks abruptly. 'Is he okay?

She stares at him. Something in his voice says it's more than a casual social enquiry, that part of him actually expects to hear bad news. She wonders exactly how much Biff knows about what happened that night. She wants to evade the question, but there doesn't seem to be any way around it.

'I'm afraid I can't tell you. We're – we're not together, any more.'

'My God.' He seems more shocked by the news than she'd have expected. Even horrified. 'What happened?'

'It's a long story.' She knows her quick smile is brittle, unconvincing, actively discouraging further questions. 'I hope you've been keeping well, anyway.'

It's as if Biff hasn't noticed the glaringly obvious change of subject. He speaks again, sounding preoccupied and tense.

'Jesus. I hope he's okay. I wrote him a letter to see how he was, a couple of months back - but he never wrote back.'

Silence falls between them. Around them, people come and go. Elizabeth doesn't notice. All her attention's focused on his face. Its new, worried, conflicted look doesn't look right on him at all.

'Listen,' he says unexpectedly. 'Have you got ten minutes? I'd kind of like to talk to you.'

They go into a quiet, shadowy little cafe nearby. Its interior seems very dark after the sunny street outside. A waiter comes over and asks what they'd like to drink. They order two coffees, and the waiter leaves. Biff leans across the table towards her.

'Look. Last time I saw Rick, I got him into the Rockwell Club. High-stakes gambling, members only. I don't know if you've heard of it, but –'

'I've heard of it,' she says. 'I know what happened.'

'So I guess you know he ran up some big-ass debts that night. I've got no clue how much, exactly, but...'

Elizabeth speaks without thinking, before she can stop herself.

'Fifty thousand dollars. If you're interested.'

Across the table, Biff takes a deep breath.

'Look. I can see why you'd be mad at him for doing such a dumbass thing. But I just wanted you to know... what happened in the Rockwell, that night_. It wasn't his fault._ '

He breaks off for a second. Lighting a cigarette and taking a long deep preoccupied drag,

'It's been on my mind all the time, since then. That it could have screwed things up with you and him, or he could have done something stupid, or, hell, God only knows – a debt like that could have trashed the guy's life. And he's a good guy. We go way back. Roomed together at Stoweville Prep. It's been driving me crazy, thinking, you know – if something bad happens to him, it's my fault.'

'I can't see how it's your fault, Biff. He made the decision to gamble that night. It's on him.'

He looks back at her. There's something guilty and evasive in his usually guileless pale blue eyes. He takes another deep drag of his cigarette.

Suddenly, Elizabeth has a bad feeling. Whatever this man's about to say, she thinks starkly, she doesn't want to hear it. Everything's frozen up inside her, and the shadowy little cafe around them has taken on a sinister, unsettling quality. She doesn't move a single muscle as she hears him speak again.

'Lizzie - I guess you don't want to hear this, and I don't blame you if you hate my guts when I've told you. But I'm going to level with you, because I feel like I owe you the truth. It's on me. What happened that night. _I set him up.'_

A long, long silence. Smoke from his cigarette hangs heavily on the air between them,

'I knew damned well not to invite him to a place like the Rockwell. You don't go to the Rockwell unless you can afford to lose big, and I knew he couldn't. In the whole five years I've been a member, I've never invited anyone who didn't belong there, and who didn't have the money to lose. Rick at the Rockwell – it was a disaster waiting to happen. Right from the start. I knew it.'

'So why did you invite him?' Elizabeth asks slowly.

'Because I didn't have a choice,' he says, and from where Elizabeth's sitting, it's as if something in the air suddenly cools twenty degrees.

He carries on speaking . Quiet and tense and urgent.

'Okay. The week before it happened. I'm just hanging out. Doing my thing. Then out of the blue, I get this invitation to meet Arnold Rothstein for a drink at his club. I was kind of flattered – I'd never met the guy before, but I knew who he was, who doesn't? I didn't know what he wanted. I thought maybe he wanted me to invest in something. I thought maybe we could do some business together.'

Elizabeth watches him. Unblinking. Aware of every single breath she takes.

'So you know, I go there that afternoon, and it's all tres civilised, tres gentlemanly, we sit down at a corner table and he offers me a cigar. And I'm sitting there and thinking he's just about to cut to the chase, and then he does - but Christ knows, it's not what I was expecting, He says he knows that – well, damn, I'm not going to tell you what he said, what he knew. Put it this way, if my folks find out, they'll cut me off without a cent and I'm finished. I have no goddamn clue on_ earth_ how this guy found out about it, but there you are.

'So anyway, I just stare at him like a damn rabbit. What the hell, I say to him, is this blackmail, and the guy just smiles and says, you think I need your money? I just need you to do me a little favour, that's all.

'Well, sure, name it, I say – I haven't got much choice, he's got me mousetrapped. And he says, I believe you know a gentleman named Richard Buchanan? I want you to invite him to the Rockwell Club next Thursday night.

'And okay, I now have no goddamn_ clue_ what's going on here. Rick's a good guy, but he's way too small-time for this guy to care about him - I'm amazed the guy even knows who he _is, _you know_?_ So I say, you're sure we're talking about the same guy – twenty-six, went to Stoweville, cousin to Bobby and Tom? And he nods, and I just ask him, what's your beef with him?

'And he just looks at me with his hands sort of steepled under his chin, and he says, that's not your concern. What _is _your concern is that he comes to the Rockwell, and that his glass stays full all evening. When he's in a sufficiently receptive frame of mind, you're to draw his attention to me. Inform him that, from your personal observation, I lose extraordinary sums here on a regular basis. Inform him that he could make his fortune tonight by joining my table. And he says to me, if Mr Buchanan _hasn't _joined my table by the end of the evening, certain key members of your family are apt to receive some... interesting information.'

There's a thin high buzzing noise in Elizabeth's ears. For a second, she thinks she's about to black out.

'I set him up. Led him in there like a lamb to the slaughter. But you'd have done the same, if you were me. I swear to god, Lizzie.'

The world around them is all shadows and smoke. The bright golden street outside the window is like a picture of another time and place.

'I still don't know why Rothstein set out to get him like that. Far as I know, Rick never did a damn thing to anyone. Like I said, there's no reason I can think of why Rothstein even knew who he _was.' _

A long, long silence. Biff watches her with an apprehensive look. When she speaks at last, it's as if she's hearing herself speak from a long way away.

'Don't worry. I don't blame you. It's not your fault. Thanks for telling me the truth.'

She rises to her feet. The waiter's approaching their table with two coffees. She's oblivious to his confused expression as she turns and walks out with the slow dazed steps of a sleepwalker. She wanders out into the sunny street. She doesn't see her surroundings at all, the elegant storefronts, the bright blue sky, the uniformed doorman standing outside the exclusive hotel she passes. Suddenly, everything inside her is focused inward.

In her mind, she's hearing Biff's voice again.

_Rick's a good guy, but he's way too small-time for this guy to care about him - I'm amazed the guy even knows who he is, you know?_

And that's true. Rick Buchanan's life and Arnold Rothstein's life couldn't be more different, or further apart. There's absolutely no reason why their paths would ever have crossed. It's unlikely the two men have even been in the same _room._

Except, that one night...

That night with Bobby and Gloria. In the speakeasy.

That night, when she'd seen Arnold for the very first time.

That night, about a month before Biff had invited Rick to the Rockwell Club.

A month. Four long weeks. More than enough time for someone with the connections and the cunning to pull some strings, do some digging. Set into motion a chain of events that would culminate in a letter on a formica-topped kitchen table, a shattered marriage, a separated woman free to begin a whole new life...

It's Arnold's voice she hears now. Low and confiding in the moonlit darkness. One arm round her shoulder, stroking her lightly.

_I wanted you the second I first saw you down that corridor. _

_I always get what I want. You know that. _

Far, far above her, the hot sun blazes down.


	15. Chapter 15

She sits in front of the mirror in the big luxurious bedroom, in the heavy rosy-gold lamplight that casts too many shadows. She's putting her makeup on.

Beside her, the window shows gathering darkness. She hasn't drawn the curtains. Seven floors down, cars travel through the deepening night with their lights on. She can see them, but can't hear them. The only sound in the world comes from the little gold carriage clock on top of the mantelpiece. Its endless ticking runs on and on, underscoring everything. Subtle and insidious. Seeming to echo the quick tickticktick of her own heartbeat.

He'll be here soon, she knows. The clock says the time's just gone five to seven.

The crystal vase of tuberoses on top of her dressing room colours the air with a strange dark beguiling scent. Something fleshy and heady and sexual.

She looks into her eyes and a stranger looks back, and a million tiny lights from the necklace she's wearing sparkle and dance in the lamplight.

And she knows she'll never mention Biff Hargensen to Arnold. She'll never mention their conversation in that shadowy little cafe that afternoon. She'll never mention the fatal night at the Rockwell Club. She'll never mention any of the things she's learned. Not now. Not ever.

Because weirdly, at some crucial level, her feelings towards him haven't changed a bit. She still loves him more than she's ever loved anyone.

She turns away from the mirror and stands up. Shadows seem to dance around her.

And she knows that, whatever he's done, he's done it for her.

For better or for worse, she is his.

_Forever. _

THE END


End file.
